


and in the core of every star

by ledbythreads



Category: Led Zeppelin
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Complete, Dark Magic, Drug Addiction, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Initiation, Light BDSM, Love Triangles, M/M, Master/neophyte, Pre-Canon, Sex Magick, Smut, Time Travel, magick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2020-09-01 18:24:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 19,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20262511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ledbythreads/pseuds/ledbythreads
Summary: Always for Sabrina*. The first Crowley/Page fan. Wandering beloved prodigal disciple.Nineteen year old Jimmy Page finds himself down and out in London in 1933. The kindness of another musician Jean-Paul is beginning to make life bearable when he recognizes Aleister Crowley staring at him in the cafe where he waits tables. Is Crowley 'a dream, a messiah, or a Svengali'* ?As Jimmy is drawn closer and closer into the worlds of both men will he find his own way or will his fall continue?





	1. Pole Star

First there had been the difficulty breathing and the terrible fatigue, then he had thought he was dead. And for some time after he conceded he was not dead Jimmy could not account for the information of his own senses and concluded he was mad instead. Not dead then, perhaps mad, Jimmy's body insisted on the basic mechanisms of life and in this way he persisted.  
The first thing he remembers from what he comes to think of as 'after the fall' is being grateful for a sun warmed over-ripe peach he had found on the ground at Camden market. With this realisation he was capable of pleasure, Jimmy had, like Adam, become aware of how dirty and how thin he was, and he had felt suddenly ashamed. 

From bridge to doss house, from doss house to washing dishes, Jimmy scrapes together money for soap, then to launder his suit. Threadbare but presentable he moves on to a day job working tables and a night job working the bar. Jimmy has always been careful with money, and always able to appear a little more genteel than his origins really warrant. The terrible loneliness of being more than thirty years adrift (and the terrible storm coming in Europe) are something he manages to supress almost entirely. Being hungry helps. 

Jean-Paul is not the first person to offer him kindness, for something vulnerable but steeled in Jimmy makes many people treat him well, but the quiet musician with the gentle eyes is the first to speak to him as an equal and to listen more than he offers advice.  
In stolen time between Jean arriving and the long sets he plays backing for, he and Jimmy mostly talk about music. They have a shared love of the blues and what Jimmy hears spoken of as 'hot' dance music but thinks of as early jazz. Jean-Paul doesn't ask about Jimmy's situation, for there are plenty of people worse off and more broken that Jimmy is in 1933.  
Jean-Paul begins to make sure Jimmy can practice playing on his breaks, and begins to come in earlier and stay later, never making Jimmy feel beholden.  
Then, one night as Jean-Paul had perhaps hoped it would, somebody was sick when somebody else could not be found and he pushes for Jimmy to be taken on. And so, it begins. Double bass, steel string guitar, Jimmy can play anything, in any style, and after a few months he is able to buy his own first guitar from a pawn shop. Jimmy sleeps with his guitar in his arms, mortally afraid it will be stolen, and he will be down and out again.  
On the first morning Jimmy has enough money beyond his immediate survival he goes into a drapers to buy a pocket square, and reckless beyond understanding he steals a hand-painted art deco silk cravat, and brings it back to Jean like a gundog bringing back a fallen pheasant.  
Jimmy feels then that beauty and music make something possible that might be called a life. And when he sees the cravat next to Jean's throat he feels overwhelmed with a tenderness of feeling that might be the start of hope. 

It is in an afternoon filled with small moments of optimism that Jimmy realises he recognises the man at the corner booth who is nodding a little into his coffee. It blows through Jimmy like a chill wind when he remembers he hasn't met the man in person but has seen his face in the dust jackets of his books at 'home' back in that other life, that other time. Aleister Crowley. For a cold moment Jimmy wonders if there is a reason for this thing that has happened to him. Is Crowley the reason for his fall? What had he been doing before finding himself here, and why can he not remember?  
Jimmy's sight goes tunnel vision and then kaleidoscopes back out - and when he looks up knowing eyes greet him. Aleister is watching.


	2. Ruined

Aleister watches the young waiter, James, with a jaundiced eye. An underfed waif who plays jazz, Aleister’s heard. He’s the kind of young man that would do very well at Oxford - but working here in a Lyons Coffee house he maybe has two years before his pretty mouth puts him in prison. 

Aleister would like to throw down a couple of sovereigns and have the lad roughly in some dank entry. He knows James has recognised him, and could be persuaded. But regrettably morphia has mortified his flesh to the point of inertia. So Aleister drinks his coffee, and broods.


	3. to begin

Jimmy knocks at the door to the apartment, a little breathless from climbing the stairs too quickly but mostly with anticipation.

There is no response for several minutes and Jimmy is about to lose his nerve and leave when the door opens quietly. Aleister betrays no surprise at all that Jimmy has made the journey but just nods.

"Don't expect me to be who you think I am." Aleister says, by way of introduction, and retreats leaving the door almost closed.

Jimmy isn't sure if he has been dismissed or invited, but he knows he won't make it here twice, so he pushes open the door and enters. The hall is narrower than Jimmy had expected, parquet flooring, no ornamentation, with dust motes swirling in the low light from a green shaded lamp on a single end table.

There are three doors to the left and two to the right. Jimmy chooses the centre left door by instinct and enters what might be called a library except it is small and cluttered. Aleister is sitting splay legged on an overstuffed loveseat against the windows and the light.

Jimmy has been on enough stages to know the choice of scene is deliberate, but after the dim hall he cannot help but see Aleister as haloed.

"I… I got your note" Jimmy begins, showing the folded card a little crushed in his hand.

Aleister makes no response, just watches Jimmy placidly.

"I've read a little of your work Mr Crowley and, um, I was curious, err, pleased to visit..."

"Do you play James?"

Aleister gestures to a plain upright piano to Jimmy's left.

"A little. I don't read music well yet, I. Well, it's more stringed instruments I know"

"Play for me anyway"

Jimmy hates to be here doing something he doesn't do well, but Aleister doesn't seem to be an easy man to refuse. He goes over and sits, tentatively plays a few chords wincing at the small mistakes. Jimmy has recently learned a little Victorian tune 'Anabelle-Lee' that Jean-Paul had shown him before his set at the cafe. Jimmy's starting to feel a slight confidence returning, and it is warm to think of the kindness Jean has shown him.

Aleister comes to stand behind him and Jimmy feels strangely naked and his hands falter on the keys. Aleister puts his hand in Jimmy's hair, and when Jimmy doesn't pull away, Aleister tightens his grip. The beginnings of pain make Jimmy woozy like the days when he first found himself in this place. Jimmy is aware now of the scent of faded lilies and the sound of the street outside, and of Aleister's steady breathing as though touching Jimmy is nothing at all.

Jimmy hadn't known he wanted Aleister to touch him, but now he feels like it is something he has wanted for a very long time, long enough to be bone weary of wanting.

"You are very receptive James, but your control is poor." Aleister says, as though marking his grammar prep homework.

All Jimmy can feel is that Aleister has taken away his hand. Jimmy notices then that he has an erection and he is grateful to be sitting.

"You will learn to control that too." Aleister says and Jimmy flushes scarlet under his pallor. 

"Come" Aleister says a little lighter "let us drink some wine, you've had enough instruction to begin."


	4. Sap

Jimmy stands naked before the mirror. Not confident about his body before his current circumstance he is nervous to meet his own gaze.   
The candlelight reveals a tall young man who appears smaller, as though the gravity of his personality contracts what people see from what is really there. His darkish hair is long for the times and only a little darker than the circles under his eyes. His torso is finely muscled and although he has gained weight recently, he is still too thin for his frame.  
Jimmy looks at his hands and forearms. He follows the tracery of veins and tendons down to long fingers, these at least he appreciates. 

He looks up to meet Aleister's gaze in reflection, it is steady but unreadable. Aleister has not touched Jimmy since that first visit and he does not do so now. Aleister stands so close behind Jimmy that Jimmy can feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise as though magnetised. He can almost feel the warmth of Aleister's breath on his bare skin, but it might just be the summer breeze from the half open window. 

"First you must see everything, only later will you learn to see nothing at all" Aleister intones  
"First you must know your breathing and the rhythm of your own heartbeat James. Then you will learn to bend them to your conscious mind"   
"You must be willing to lose all control, all meaning. If you survive that, you will have begun to be a man."

Jimmy feels himself lulled by the rhythm of Aleister's words. He is tired, so tired, from the constant cycle of his days. His time with Aleister is a release. Jimmy want to just lean into Aleister's arms and stop struggling. Stop trying to survive.   
Jimmy looks again, pleadingly, at the older man behind him, but he cannot ask him for anything.  
Aleister laughs. "One day you will" he says "but not tonight" and he puts a hand on Jimmy's shoulder as though to steady him.  
Jimmy shivers. He wants to turn his head and kiss Aleister's fingers and his skin burns with want and shame at wanting. He is so tired. 

Aleister runs a thumbnail slowly up Jimmy's spine from the small of his back to the nape of his neck.  
"Feel your sap rising James, feel the chaos in your blood."  
Jimmy bites back a gasp. Says nothing.   
"My rod" Aleister says "no longer flowers. Not since the lady of the poppy has seduced me." He sounds wistful "but you James, are another matter. You are ripening."   
Aleister tightens his grasp on Jimmy's shoulder and bends to kiss Jimmy’s neck. Jimmy feels a mixture of disgust and adoration and leans into the kiss arching his neck. Aching.  
Aleister changes the kiss to biting and begins to suck his mark on Jimmy as Jimmy fights the urge to throw him off. Jimmy feels so bruised from life that the lines between pleasure and anxiety are wearing thin and he feels like he might shatter.  
Aleister takes away his mouth and Jimmy feels the saliva drying on his skin.  
"You're not ready for pain" Aleister observes. Matter of fact. "Do you understand me James? What have you done to yourself?"   
"Uh, I was, uh. That is, my circumstances have been somewhat reduced." Jimmy flushes, feeling defeated.  
"One cannot pour out from an empty vessel" Aleister tuts "come lie down on the chaise." 

Jimmy is astonished that now Aleister gently pats him towards the long seat then kneels beside it calmly stroking Jimmy's hair and murmuring. Aleister folds a comforter over Jimmy and cradles his shoulders, strokes his face and chest.   
Jimmy's stomach knots from the unexpected change of pace, and he realises, from disappointment.   
Aleister continues his ministrations until Jimmy cannot help himself and starts to feel drowsy. Jimmy feels his constant internal hum of surveillance start to quieten and his shoulders unknot against the crook of Aleister’s arm.  
The very edges of dream are netting Jimmy deeper when suddenly Aleister drags him upright by the hair, his eyes blazing.   
On pure instinct Jimmy lashes out   
"Get the fuck off me, fuck off"  
Jimmy is on his feet, naked and panting. Furious.  
"What the fuck? Aleister?"  
"I told you I'm not who you think I am" Aleister says blandly "but that was better James. You're improving."

.


	5. Refraction

Jimmy has made it to the cafe because having work is more important than anything he is feeling or not feeling. In his headlong rush to literally run away from Aleister Jimmy has had to drag his guitar in its hard case and he is flushed and jittery.

Jimmy slumps onto a crate outside the back entrance to the cafe, feeling like the scum running in rivulets down the middle of the alley. Now the anger has faded, Jimmy begins to be aware of a pull back to Aleister that is growing stronger. Jimmy hugs his knees to keep from rocking where somebody might see him.

Jimmy's memories of love and sex from 'before' are fragmented like the oil rainbows that he can see refracted from lamplight on the wet ground at his feet. He feels a memory of being young and loving someone too much. His body remembers another lover, a woman he thinks, who was older maybe, and desire mixed with fear, of lust. 

Jimmy can't remember the kind of love in love songs, but he remembers so little from that other time. But Aleister, the memories feel bright, almost too lucid. Jimmy can feel every touch, every touch withheld, like it is still happening to him. Tonight, it had felt like sex, but he's not sure if it was. He’d wanted it. Wanted Aleister's hands on him, Aleister's mouth. Wanted to see them in the mirror. See himself being touched.

Jean-Paul is standing there. Maybe he has been there for a few minutes. Their eyes meet and Jean greets Jimmy with his eyes not words, never presuming into Jimmy's inner world.

"Hey" Jimmy says, breaking the silence.

"Hullo" Jean-Paul stands steady in the shadows, asking nothing of Jimmy except his company.

"Do we have time?" Jimmy asks, although even without a watch he knows he is early.

"Yes. No rush. We're just going to do the usual set but the others have gone down the road to eat already."

"You didn't go?"

"No. My mother sent you sandwiches. I was by theirs earlier tonight" Jean-Paul takes a packet of greaseproof paper from the canvas fishing bag he carries small bits of kit around in.

"Sent me?"

"Yes. I mentioned you don't have family in London."

Jimmy has never said this to Jean-Paul. But Jean, so close to his own parents, would presume nobody would be as abandoned as Jimmy if he had people he could rely on.

Jimmy has never mentioned Aleister either, but Jimmy thinks Jean knows. He sees much but says little, asks less.

"Thank you. Thank your mother for me Jean"

"You could thank her yourself. She's invited you for dinner on Monday. That's still your day off, isn't it?" Jean-Paul folds himself onto the crates beside Jimmy.

"Yes. Thank you. How kind of her”

“These are good" Jimmy really thinks so.

As Jean-Paul talks Jimmy's stomach has calmed and he can chew and swallow, can taste the fresh bread and ham. The real butter. Jimmy lets himself imagine what it would be like to be in someone's actual home again. The thought is pleasing but a little intimidating.

Jimmy watches Jean eat, the angle of his jaw, how neat he is even sitting in a filthy back alley. How white his cuffs are, and how he moves his hands. Jean-Paul reminds Jimmy of someone, as though trust was already a given between them before they met. But he doesn't remember this feeling of being able to feel the heat of Jean's body through the air between them.

He doesn't remember wanting to reach out and catch Jean-Paul's wrist, to bring his hand up to his face so he can kiss Jean’s palm. Aleister has awoken something in him, something more than fear or lust. Aleister has woken the desire to find out what, or who, he truly wants.

Now it is time to go inside, time to make music for the careless bright people that are as clear and insubstantial as the watered-down gin the cafe serves. As Jimmy rises and opens the door to go inside Jean-Paul puts a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. Jimmy sees them reflected in the glass pane of the dirty window.

The parallel images, a diptych of Aleister and Jean-Paul, stops Jimmy dead. Jimmy wants Jean-Paul's hands on him, mouth on him, wants to be pushed against the wall, wants all Jean’s weight on him. Wants to drop to his knees for him, wants to bury his face in that clean white shirt. Jimmy looks up at Jean-Paul in their reflection. Jean has seen right through him. His eyes greet Jimmy’s and answer him.


	6. open

Jimmy turns around meeting Jean-Paul's eyes directly. Jean reaches out for Jimmy, and Jimmy feels so grateful not to be uncertain. Jean pulls Jimmy into a light embrace, his hands solid against Jimmy's sides, and Jimmy feels held for the first time by someone he trusts. He feels the relief like a fever flush across his torso and dizzy, just stands there unable to respond further.

Jean-Paul pauses for several heartbeats looking at Jimmy, looking for his answer, and then kisses him on the mouth. Jimmy feels Jean-Paul's soft lips like a welcome, like a blessing, and then as though freed from a spell he hungrily pulls Jean closer and opens his mouth for Jean's tongue. Jimmy half lets out a soft moan and he feels Jean-Paul smiling into the kiss as he feels Jimmy's reaction, his permission. Jean-Paul continues to hold Jimmy lightly, slowly and thoroughly kissing him.

Jimmy feels full of the sensation of Jean's tongue and Jean, who is a little shorter, reaching up to him. He feels himself hardening against Jean's belly and he feels a warmth spreading into his own. The feelings are not what Jimmy was expecting after his encounter with Aleister, there is no intoxication, just a steady honey warmth. Jean-Paul tastes of all things of dandelion and burdock and Jimmy realizes Jean's mother must have packed some for him. The taste makes Jimmy feel like a warm afternoon in an English garden, but Jean's lack of urgency confuses Jimmy, what if he is not what Jean has wanted after all?

"You kiss as well as you play" Jean-Paul says at last, holding Jimmy's face back but keeping full body contact.

Jimmy blushes and looks away. Maybe Jean is letting him down gently.

"I guess we will be missed if we..."

"Come home with me tonight Jim"

Jimmy is surprised. Jean-Paul is so courtly and mannered Jimmy wasn't expecting him to be so direct. He really isn't certain of Jean's physical attraction because Jean-Paul seems so poised while Jimmy feels chaotic with need.

"It's not far. I have a room. A landlady but she's... accommodating."

"You really mean it?" Jimmy bites back the vulnerability, but it is already said.

Jean-Paul searches Jimmy's face again. He seems to be weighing some internal decision. Charting the right course of action. Jean takes hold of Jimmy's hand and presses it against his crotch. Jimmy feels how hard and beautiful Jean-Paul's cock feels under his loose trousers and again the urge to just drop to his knees is almost unbearable.

"Do you believe me now" Jean asks "what can you hear?"

Jimmy can hear the blood rushing in his ears, and the catch in Jean-Paul's breathing as he presses against Jimmy's hand, and the sound of the cafe.

Jimmy hears Aleister’s voice in his head "_I'm not who you think I am_"

"I’m so sorry Jean" Jimmy says, and he looks away once more “I can’t tonight”

Jean-Paul looks at Jimmy again, as though weighing his heart.

“No matter” Jean-Paul says lightly “there are many nights, no? Come inside now”

and Jean-Paul kisses Jimmy lightly and then lets him go.

.


	7. door

Jimmy is nearly crying by the time Aleister opens the door.   
Emboldened by desperation Jimmy steps into the hallway once again without permission, and Aleister steps backwards before him looking faintly amused. Jimmy props his guitar case by the door and then turns in wordless need and stands shaking.   
Jimmy visibly fights to control his emotion but days of exhaustion and confusion, tonight playing beside Jean-Paul till dawn after their encounter, and the cracks are showing whatever Jimmy does.   
Jimmy croaks "Please Aleister, please, I need you, please"   
"James. Do you ask freely?" Aleister says  
"I don't… know, I can't, I can't …think, please Aleister, please" Jimmy is crying now, silent unnoticed tears be doesn't wipe away.   
"No" Aleister says "James, you can think. Try harder"  
Jimmy falls to his knees and rocks, holding himself, sobbing. Aleister stands impassive beside him, offering nothing. At last Jimmy reaches deep inside himself and then looks up at Aleister, his eyes steady but empty.   
"I am asking freely. Help me. I'm lost. I know it's you Aleister. You will help me"  
"Yes" Aleister looks serious now   
"Come"

Aleister reaches out for Jimmy's hand and helps him to his feet, his touch feels strong and certain now. Aleister leads Jimmy to the first door on the right.   
The room is like a small bare white bedroom but instead of a bed there is a raised altar platform shrouded also in white. On the platform is a ceramic pitcher and a bowl.   
There are no windows but brass lamps in four corners light the room well and it is warm and smells strongly of jasmine.   
After the effort of asking for help Jimmy is silent but calmer. He submits to Aleister's lead knowing this time he is under the protection of a truce and Aleister will not hurt him.  
Aleister deftly undresses Jimmy and folds his clothes neatly by the door. Jimmy lets his limbs be moved but otherwise just watches Aleister.   
Now Jimmy is naked Aleister leads him over to the altar and pours water from the pitcher into the bowl. He takes a sponge from the bowl and begins to wash Jimmy from his face working down.  
The water is warm, and Jimmy knows then that the room has been prepared for him, but he doesn't question how Aleister has known he would return when he believes he didn't know himself.  
Aleister works reverently without irony or comment. Just the work of washing. The ringing out of the sponge. The warm water. Again, and again.   
Jimmy's face is cleaned of tears. His hair brushed back and smoothed. His shoulders drop. His chest stops heaving. His arms stop shaking. His back feels straighter.  
His legs feel they can hold him up again. Then Aleister washes Jimmy's hands and kisses each. Then Aleister washes Jimmy's feet, kneeling and taking each into his lap.   
Finally, Aleister washes Jimmy's sex but nothing about it feels arousing, just pleasant. Aleister looks up at Jimmy and Jimmy feels then that he is falling into Aleister’s eyes, falling without danger, without end.   
“You are blessed” Aleister says “Love is the law”  
Jimmy remembers. Remembers the books.   
“Love under will” he says, still falling.  
Aleister then kisses Jimmy’s sex and Jimmy feels a circle of protection close with a click around him. Suddenly he feels like he is covered in flames that do not burn. Jimmy feels for a moment like he is swimming in time, that his body is here in London and his head is in eternity. Then he is here again with Aleister and certain. 

"Give yourself to me" Aleister says  
"Yes" Jimmy says 

Aleister guides Jimmy to sit on the platform and then removes and folds his robe. Naked he comes and stands between Jimmy's legs. Jimmy feels like he is looking down from a very high place. Naked, Aleister is clothed in light.   
Jimmy can see that Aleister's muscles have melted away, but he still has the knotted mountaineer physique of his youth. Jimmy doesn't see any beauty in Aleister, but he sees the power.  
When he leans down to kiss Aleister and their lips touch for the first time it is so erotic to Jimmy that he feels like he is already coming, even though he isn't even hard yet.  
"Yes James, take it for yourself, take all that you need" Aleister says and then kisses him again, his hand in Jimmy’s hair, and Jimmy’s skin is already dissolving in molten light "This is just the start. Are you ready to begin?"  
"Yes" Jimmy says "Yes I am"


	8. door II

Aleister guides Jimmy to lie down on the altar platform. Jimmy feels like he is levitating, and his bones are flowing like mercury.  
"Genius without technique is often clumsy and unintelligible, but technique without genius is dry bones" Aleister says.  
"You have the genius but you've no idea what to do with it James, if you don't learn it will ruin you"

Aleister holds Jimmy's face in his hands and then he pushes two fingers into Jimmy's mouth and presses his tongue.  
Jimmy feels the roll of emotion as he goes under for Aleister. The feel and taste of Aleister's fingers the centre of his whole universe.  
"You didn't need to turn him away; you are worthy of worship James"  
Aleister pushes his fingers further into Jimmy's mouth and Jimmy suckles and moans, his pupils dilated and molten as he watches Aleister work him.  
"Nothing you want is wrong to the willing James. You must ask for everything, but I will only give what I will. Do you understand?"  
Jimmy nods and slowly Aleister draws out his fingers and slicks Jimmy's own saliva down across his throat.

"I want you to hurt me. Like the first time." Jimmy says with great effort  
"No" Aleister says  
Jimmy gulps back a gasp and looks at Aleister with wide eyes  
"Please"  
"No, you're not ready"  
Jimmy moves to cover his face with his hands and Aleister catches them.  
"No" Aleister says, more softly this time "You will it but I do not - that's not shame"

"Bind me"  
"Yes"  
Jimmy experiences Aleister's first yes as an intense wave of pleasure, rose gold.  
"Good" Aleister says "Feel it James, feel your will answered"  
Aleister stoops and pulls the thick silk belt from his robe and with an experienced practicality, binds Jimmy's wrists in front of his chest so he can't use his hands, but he can't hurt himself on the bonds.  
Aleister rests one hand on Jimmy's chest as though feeling his heart beating.  
"Take me" Jimmy says dreamily. Lush oxytocin waves soak across him.  
"Yes"  
With the lightest of touches Aleister begins. Jimmy has never felt touch so intensely as the barely perceptible pressure of Aleister's caresses.  
Across his torso, his belly, the outside of his thighs. Maddening silken touches that make Jimmy want to writhe to gain more pressure. To gain release.  
By the time Aleister moves to his inner thighs Jimmy is gasping, impossibly hard, entirely undone already.  
Aleister stops. The unburning flames continue to flicker across Jimmy's skin till he is softly warm and floating. Then Aleister starts again.  
Again, and again till Jimmy feels Aleister will never touch his cock. Till he wants this more than breathing. Till the wanting occupies every part of his mind as a single pulsing yearning.  
Then suddenly Aleister does, and Jimmy feels incredible, elated, sanctified.  
Aleister slowly strokes Jimmy his other hand on the centre of Jimmy's chest.  
Methodically Aleister tests Jimmy's response. Builds the ebb and flow of pleasuring him and letting him subside back into the soft flames of his own desire.  
Jimmy feels the single-minded skill with which Aleister touches him as redemption, and he gives himself entirely and utterly to Aleister's control. 

The pressure of Aleister's hand against his chest now seems to Jimmy to be pushing him backwards through the platform into another reality.  
Once again Jimmy feels like he is falling, but this time further and further inside himself. Jimmy starts to feel the edge of orgasm as a steady state, opening whole worlds within worlds within him.  
And then the visions begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Aleister says about genius and technique is a direct quote from 'Liber Artemis Iota vel de Coitu Scholia Triviae' a technical paper for Aleister Crowley's magical order on sexual ethics.


	9. door III

Going down, going down now  
Going down, going down now  
Going down, going down now  
Going down, going down  
Down, down, down, down

Jimmy is standing naked except for a short cloak beside two men in Hellenic armour in a walled garden. One of the men looks like Jean-Paul but isn't him.  
The other is broad and dark and holds a round shield to guard Jimmy.   
The man who looks like Jean has his arm loosely around Jimmy's shoulders, he turns to Jimmy and smiles offering Jimmy his sword.   
Jimmy walks forward alone holding the weapon.

In the branches of an ancient tree a beautiful youth is sleeping.   
His hair is like golden fleece. His mouth is curved in a smile even in his slumbers.  
Jimmy feels an irresistible urge to climb the tree and wake him.  
He drops the sword and 

He is falling  
his bones are mercury   
his skin is on fire  
his wings are broken  
he is going to break apart but doesn't care  
waves of intense pleasure crest but do not break.  
He is calling Aleister's name  
and his mouth is full with Aleister's fingers again  
dripping with nectar  
His eyes are stars, are poppies, are diamonds  
falling.

He is the dragon that guards the tree.  
Jimmy curls sinuously around the tree trunk towards the sleeping youth.  
His forked tongue flicks out to taste the sweat pooling at the space where his collarbone meets his throat.  
The man opens his eyes and laughs, he bares his throat for Jimmy unafraid

Aleister is calling him   
Jimmy takes flight and the universe opens out before him, the sea below him  
the night rushes under his wings  
the stars are his companions  
Jimmy feels sinuous. Joyous. Free.  
Aleister is calling him  
Jimmy dives towards the waves  
breaks the water into human form  
drowning, choking, fighting for air  
as shock after shock of orgasm rocks him  
wrecks him  
he is on the rocks  
clutching Aleister with bound hands  
slipping  
under again  
as another wave breaks  
him open  
Aleister is  
holding him  
holding him  
holding him  
pulling him up for air  
giving him the kiss of life

unbinding him

Aleister picks Jimmy up and lifts him off the altar and lays him across his lap.   
He knows his strength and patience will most likely fade soon, but in this moment of his most sacred self Aleister is gentle and devoted.   
Aleister pulls out several soft blankets from under the altar platform and makes a nest for Jimmy lowering him into it and arranging him into a fetal position as though for a Neolithic burial. Jimmy is still half-tranced, and wonder struck. Not yet able to speak.   
Aleister gathers his supplies. It has been quite some time since he last did this work with someone quite so naive and untutored as Jimmy, but Aleister had meant what he said about Jimmy’s innate genius for magick. In the right time and place Aleister thinks Jimmy could be a priest for thousands, but here he is in considerable danger from his own desires.   
Aleister begins the work of bringing Jimmy back and making sure his soul isn’t left wandering. Jimmy is so raw he can’t even set his own wards. Aleister takes oil steeped with rosemary and begins to massage Jimmy’s chest and thighs by uncovering him in sections lest he catch a chill.   
As he works Aleister sees the things his glamour has hidden from Jimmy. He sees the shake start in his hands, the angry redness of new wounds at the crook of his left arm and the silver of old scars. Aleister knows his time with Jimmy must be short because soon he will be sick again.   
Jimmy is stirring. Aleister can see his eyelids flicker as he starts to regain the use of his limbs. Like a foal Aleister thinks, they are always like new-born foals the first time.   
“Aleister”  
“I’m here”  
“I was Jason, then the dragon, in Colchis.”  
“And did you steal the fleece?”  
“It was a man, a beautiful man”  
“Not Medea?”  
“No. He was like the sun”  
“and who else?”  
“A man with a shield, another with a sword”  
“So James, your muse was fire, your guards were earth and air. Were you water?”  
Jimmy gasps and Aleister soothes him  
“drowning… you pulled me from the Hellespont”  
“It doesn’t need to drown you. You need to stop throwing yourself in too deep James”  
“I... I liked it”  
“Of course you did” Aleister laughs mildly “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be unkind”  
Jimmy nestles back against Aleister  
“James” Aleister shakes Jimmy gently “James, this isn’t love you’re feeling”  
Jimmy looks up at Aleister sideways, silently reproaching him.  
“Well, it is love, but it’s not mine. It’s holy love, star love. Be careful of your heart”  
Aleister knows Jimmy doesn’t believe him, but for the moment he lets it pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics (first paragraph) from When the Levee Breaks by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie 1929 - via Led Zeppelin's fourth album 1971


	10. comedown

Jimmy wakes naked and alone. The lamps extinguished, one candle gutters on the altar, but his body tells him it must be after noon.  
Thirsty and needing to piss he pulls on his shirt and underwear from the neat pile by the door and makes his way out into the apartment.  
The door to the library is locked and Jimmy feels the stirring of trepidation as he'd hoped to greet Aleister on familiar ground.  
The doors to the two rooms he has never entered are also locked leaving only the bathroom, and this feels awkward to Jimmy who really does want to present himself to Aleister with some dignity.  
The pressings of his bodily need however can't be ignored so he knocks on the bathroom door. No answer. Perhaps Aleister is out.  
Jimmy pushes open the door and stumbles with shock to see Aleister slumped insensate on the tiled floor.  
The room smells sour and Jimmy reels.  
Jimmy heats with shame as he feels but resists the urge to turn away, but he makes himself kneel and he shakes Aleister by the shoulder calling his name.  
Aleister's shallow breathing catches and he opens his eyes. 

"Why are you still here?" Aleister says  
Jimmy feels like he has been slapped.  
"Let me help you"  
"James you can't even help yourself. I don't need anything you could possibly give me"  
Jimmy looks away but he keeps his hand on Aleister's shoulder  
Aleister shrugs him off and struggles, sits up. "Well, a glass of water" Aleister concedes.  
Jimmy stands and casts about for something Aleister can drink from and sees, on the edge of the sink, Aleister's accoutrements.  
Aleister, unconcerned by his recent stupor, simply throws off his robe, seems to shake himself out the last remnants of his intoxication and pushes Jimmy aside. He runs the tap and dips his head under the flow, rising dripping to glare at Jimmy.  
Jimmy, now desperate and deciding it is all too much, simply has to piss and turns to the lavatory to do so.  
"Dear gods child" Aleister says "you're too bloody easy to shock to make it sporting"

While Jimmy pisses Aleister watches. Jimmy tries to be blasé about it and fails. This wasn't how he had expected his attempt to rescue Aleister to turn out.  
When Jimmy turns back to face him, to Jimmy's mortification, Aleister is looking at him with hunger.  
"Better make the most of it James. This is the only time this month I'm likely to be able to fuck you"  
Despite his confusion Jimmy feels a jolt of arousal matching Aleister's.  
He looks down at Aleister's half hard thickish cock, the tangle of damp greying hairs, the web of Aleister's varicose veins.  
Nothing of Aleister the Magus is visible today but Jimmy wants him.  
Jimmy covers the distance between them in two steps and has his hands on Aleister's hips.  
Jimmy grinds against Aleister and has the gratification of seeing his own arousal returned to him.  
"Shall I call you Nimue today then? Are you trying to enchant an old magician"  
"Call me by my name" Jimmy says still grinding his hips against Aleister as he feels the other man slowly harden against him  
"Shall I fuck you? ...Jimmy?"  
Jimmy gasps and bucks against Aleister  
"No"  
"No?"  
"No. I want you in my mouth, I want you, I want to kneel for you. Fuck. Aleister"  
Jimmy slides down to the floor, his mouth filling with spit. He rolls his face in Aleister’s crotch, drinking in the sour musk of him.  
"Pull my hair. Fuck Aleister."  
"Take your shirt off"  
"Pull my hair and I will do fucking anything"  
Jimmy peels of the shirt and then grasps Aleister's ass, kissing and sucking his belly, waiting.  
Aleister buries his hands in Jimmy's hair and pulls softly, then a little harder, then harder still.  
Jimmy lets out a moan of satisfaction and victory, and hums against Aleister's skin.  
"Don't be smug James, this is a narrowing window of opportunity"  
"I'm going to make you come Aleister. Come hard"  
"We’ll see"  
"Aleister?"  
"James" 

Jimmy replies by taking Aleister deep into his mouth.  
Jimmy feels Aleister harden then lose his erection and then respond once again as Jimmy works out how to pleasure him.  
When Jimmy feels Aleister’s composure start to falter he drops a hand down to stroke himself and hears Aleister laugh in that dry ironic way he has but his cock tells a different story.  
This isn't at all like the ritual sex that Aleister had made for him. This is awkward and animal and Jimmy can feel the tile edges on the floor digging into his knees, he can hear the street outside, he can feel every glide and ridge of pressure of his tongue on Aleister and Aleister’s hands in his hair.  
At this moment Jimmy doesn’t want to be anywhere else, doesn’t want to be saved, or taught, or transformed. He just wants to make this man come hard so he can feel it happen.  
Aleister is already near Jimmy thinks and he slides his fingers into the crack of Aleister’s ass, caressing his hairs, finding his entrance Jimmy tentatively strokes and presses and he hears Aleister laugh again but lower in his chest.  
“Jimmy, my Vivian... gods!  
Jimmy tries to take Aleister as deep as he can manage. Aleister is rocking his hips now but not really thrusting, frustratingly conscientious Jimmy thinks, desperate to feel Aleister lose it for him.  
And then Aleister grunts and spasms and Jimmy’s mouth is flooded with hot bitter seed and he flushes and glows and glories in the moment.  
Aleister pulls out of Jimmy and tips Jimmy’s head back to watch him swallow.  
“Now you. Like this” Aleister looks wolffish, still hungry.  
The feeling of of having his throat exposed like this and the taste of Aleister’s cum start to make Jimmy float. Aleister gives a sharp tug on his hair.  
“No, stay here. James!”  
“I... uh... what?”  
“Stay here. In this room.”  
Jimmy focuses, catches himself, gazes blearily up at Aleister.  
“More. Talk”  
“I’m here, I can taste you burning my mouth, I feel so hard. So good”  
“Stay here. Show me. Keep your eyes open”  
Jimmy starts to stroke himself with deliberation, it feels incredible with Aleister watching his face, he feels everything magnified back to him. Shimmering.  
“No. You’re falling into me. James”  
“Uh, I... I feel full of you. You were hard in my mouth. I had you. I had you on my knees. Here”  
“Good. Stay here”  
“You make me so hard. I feel you watching. I want to come for you. Here”  
“Good. Show me. Come for me. Spill for me. My Vivian”  
Jimmy tries to stay focussed but he’s losing it.  
He arches back steadying himself with one hand on the tiled floor and the other tight fisted, hard, stroking, shuddering, nearly, almost, fully, coming, coming hard.  
Aleister smiles down at him, that faint amusement, but he’s flushed too. 

Aleister lets go of Jimmy’s hair and separates himself, leaves Jimmy kneeling and sits on the edge of the bath.  
“Excellent. Now, go and try that with your lover. I’m sure he’s got blue balls from all the waiting”  
“My... uh? My lover?”  
“Yes, your lover, your young man the musician”  
“But. Aleister, I...”  
“James. I can’t be your lover. I have far too much to teach you for that. And far too little... capacity” Aleister smirks “As you have seen”  
Jimmy blushes and his chest aches, but he knows what Aleister says is true. Jean-Paul is already his lover. It is true, but he hasn’t had the courage Jean deserves.  
“Go” Aleister says  
And Jimmy can see Aleister is absent , his mind already elsewhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nimue also called Vivian was Merlin’s student and eventual final enchanter. Some stories say she imprisoned Merlin in a tree with his own magic and he’s there to this day.


	11. C’est fou

The buzz at the cafe when Jimmy arrives is unusually focussed on Jean-Paul. Jean passes through life with such competence that often people fail to register his actions.   
But even Jean-Paul cannot deflect from the spectacle of him carrying a very young baby in a raggedy blanket. A baby who is wailing.   
Jimmy touches Jean’s elbow but Jean is entirely focussed on the infant.   
“Ne pleure pas, petit ange. C'est bon bébé.”   
“A foundling, Jim, left under the piano! Mon Dieu, C’est fou!”   
Jimmy is alarmed at how adorable he is finding Jean-Paul shocked into speaking French.


	12. Found

“Open your shirt”  
Jimmy is aware that many people are watching them and he is taken off guard. Confused by his rush of delight in Jean-Paul, the wailing baby, the backstage hubbub.  
“Uh.. what?”  
“Your shirt, I need to warm the baby up. On your chest Jim, you warm babies on skin”  
“Right. Really? You do?”  
“Quickly. Christ, poor little thing”

Jimmy unbuttons his shirt and Jean-Paul pulls up his undershirt and slides the unwrapped baby onto Jimmy’s chest.  
“Here look, tuck her arms, make sure her head’s like that or she’ll suffocate. Jim. Look”  
Jimmy cautiously looks down and sees the tiny grubby hands, the blotchy little face, the ear like a seashell. The baby clutches at his chest, and Jimmy’s heart melts for Jean, so efficiently concerned. Jimmy tentatively wraps his hands round the baby and Jean murmurs approval.  
“How do you? ... I’m no good with babies”  
“My sister, she fosters foundlings for the Coram... I’ll explain later. Need to get her some milk”  
Jimmy sits like a fossilised hot water bottle while a succession of people come and peer at the baby until they drift away bored, and Jean-Paul returns with a shot glass and a jug of warm milk

“Not ideal but... no idea how long she’s been there... watch this, just like kittens”  
Jean positions the baby in the nest of Jimmy’s clothing and holds the milk in the shot glass to her lips. Jimmy is amazed to see the baby lap like a cat. Jimmy feels Jean resting his hand on his thigh. Totally wrapped up in what he is doing. His beautiful hands so steady. The smell of the baby’s head, peculiarly alluring. The milky smell and the closeness. Tears come into Jimmy’s eyes because he feels rescued by Jean-Paul too.

Jean misinterprets “I know, I know. But the mothers are in desperate situations, especially the young girls. You know how people are. Breena says the mothers often leave a letter or a token but this one has nothing”  
“But why here? Don’t they usually...” Jimmy can only think of Oliver Twist “Have them in an orphanage, or whatnot?”  
“Goodness knows, C’est naze...” Jean-Paul catching Jimmy’s expression grins “ah, I speak a little French with my family. My mother, she’s French, or she was... as a girl. I forget myself... with you James”  
Jimmy feels that he is not breathing, he wants so badly to stop time, to take Jean-Paul’s face in his hands. To tell him that he is the foundling, that he is found, that Jean has found him.

“Look, ah. She’s sleeping now”  
Jean leans close to Jimmy to fuss with the blanket, his breath on Jimmy’s face. Jimmy feels the warmth of the baby cradled in his hands and doesn’t want to surrender it.  
“Will you take her?”  
“Well she can’t live under the piano” Jean-Paul smiles “She can go to my mother tonight. She welcomes all the waifs and strays. It’s not far. Will you... come too?”  
Jimmy can see the slightest furrow in Jean’s brow, the slightest hint of pain.  
“Yes” Jimmy says “Yes Jean”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really how you rescue a cold baby - just so you know. But don’t give them cows milk, now we know to wait and give them human milk or formula. 
> 
> ‘The Coram’ is the London Foundlings Hospital. Many babies were still abandoned in the 1930s (well left often with the hope of returning) because of poverty and stigma about illegitimacy. The small babies were fostered out, often in the countryside.
> 
> My French is awful, you can correct me if you know better. Jean-Paul only speaks with his mother and maybe the odd musician over from France, maybe you can teach him to swear non-achronistically? Verlan etc changes so quickly I can’t give him any really idiomatic things to say.


	13. Nothing

They have turned down so many side streets and back alleys Jimmy has only a vague idea where they are. Jean-Paul seems to navigate a hidden London Jimmy doesn't know.  
Jimmy has for once left his guitar at the cafe because he needs both hands to carry the baby.  
She's asleep down his shirt and Jean-Paul has only allowed him to wrap up in a blanket and his overcoat, and he must walk along like this apparently.  
In all these months Jimmy has not really been able to spare a thought for anyone more vulnerable than himself but the baby, so utterly in need of protection, has opened up questions like a new deck of cards fanned out in his mind.  
"Jean? How old are you anyway."  
"Nineteen in January."  
"You're eighteen?" Jimmy sounds startled and Jean turns back to look at him quizzically.  
Jimmy blinks, everyone here has to grow up so quickly. Jean especially seems so finished to Jimmy. Already a man.  
"Why how old are you?"  
"Twenty... uh... Twenty-one I think... in January."  
"January" Jean-Paul smiles as he often does on finding they have things in common, but then concern "you think?"  
Jimmy looks away and Jean swallows the question he had in his mouth. Instead he asks "Why did you want to know?"  
Jimmy feels the chill of that first winter, the absence of time, the peach on that first warm day. Now the year is turning again, almost done.

"The baby. She just... arrived" Jimmy says "You seem so much older than eighteen. You... hold it all together."  
"I expect so" Jean-Paul saunters on head down "I've been working a long time. I was on the stage before I can remember. Touring not much older than her, my mother says"  
"I think I was just a schoolboy before I started playing with a band. Then I... I have memory problems. I'm sorry I never said before."  
Jimmy catches himself clutching the baby almost too tightly, makes himself relax his hands, checks inside his shirt that the baby is ok. Jean-Paul waits.  
"Jim" Jean catches his eyes "what does it matter?"  
"Non, rien de rien" Jimmy tries, copying the Piaf song  
"Oui chéri" Jean jokes because of course he cannot know it. Then he stops and his eyes are full of longing, his empty hands open at his sides.  
"Forgive me…" Jimmy says, the words out before he can weigh them for their consequences.

The baby starts to whimper, a high plaintive half cry  
"Always." Jean says softly but then turns away, leading on.  
Jimmy feels the baby's need and wonders if he often feels so newborn himself because he's shouldn't really be here, that it's not yet his time. He soothes her, and she calms to the rhythm of their walking, but Jimmy's mind is overlain with images that don't belong here. If the world were the right way up the baby would now be, what, older than her mother? And Jean-Paul? and Aleister? Already gone. Aleister, gone.  
The world starts to swim, and Jimmy leans up against the wall in a cacophony of sounds, a modern telephone, an electric guitar being tuned, laughter from a television.  
Jean's hands are against his face. "Here, let me take her. Jim, it's alright"  
"No. No, I can manage. I just...I don't know. But it's fine. Really I'm fine"  
"But we're here."  
They are in a quiet street. A block of flats. The stairwell.  
"You go with her then."  
"Come inside Jim"  
"I should just get some air. Really. Tomorrow. Your mother is expecting me tomorrow, she will be too surprised already with little Rose"  
"You named her..."  
"I... guess I did" Jean is looking again at Jimmy with his cool eyes.  
Jean lifts Rose out of Jimmy's shirt, carefully holding her head and wrapping her quickly in the blanket. Then he's up the stairs and gone.  
And Jimmy waits alone in the pool of light below the gaslamp - he wants to gather his thoughts. Little Rose is so real. New life. And Jean too is real with feelings of his own.  
Jimmy feels he has been living but he hasn't felt alive. He hasn't felt responsible for anything but continuing to live. Aleister has given him ways to feel and the start of control, but baby Rose has made him feel like a person again. His heart wide open and raw Jimmy, for a moment, is happy.


	14. Jean

When Jean-Paul returns they both know where they are going without asking.   
Jimmy reliable from anxiety, and Jean reliable by nature, they have never skipped work before, but tonight things need to be put right before the dawn.  
Rose's presence between them has felt like a sign they cannot turn away from. The world feels open like life beginning, and they must warm it before it becomes cold and fades away.

Jean weaves through his London maze again and Jimmy follows Jean's thread, feeling pulled along with gentle certainty although they do not touch, not once.   
They come to one of the walled gardens that Jimmy remembers walking freely through in his own time, but here are gated and closed.  
Jean-Paul looks for a certain place and then starts easily to climb the wall, and Jimmy can see the hidden way it is done and follows.   
Jimmy drops down the far side into Jean's waiting hands.  
They move together like the shadows that surround them, the air scented with laburnum and wanting.   
Wordlessly they fit together like a key in each other's locks. 

This time Jimmy doesn't mistake slowness for reluctance and instead feels for the depths that Jean-Paul rouses in him.   
That honey sweetness once again warms Jimmy's belly, but this time his heart is open too, and honey pours out of him like the summer is inside his chest although outside the garden it is winter.  
Kissing Jean-Paul feels timeless, like it may be all Jimmy does for a week, or maybe the rest of his life.   
Jean's hands are inside his shirt, smooth against his chest, deft and certain.  
Jean's hips are up against his own, not demanding, but answering, need against need, but with the promise of everything in its proper time.  
Jimmy remembers Jean taking his hand to prove to Jimmy his wanting, and now Jimmy takes Jean's hand and presses it against his own erection.  
"All for you" he says.  
Jimmy feels Jean smile in the darkness "Thank you" he says and takes Jimmy as though he is a gift.   
"I'm going to take you to my bed" Jean-Paul says  
"I know" Jimmy answers  
"I'm going to be slow with you"  
"Yes"  
"And after we sleep, I'm going to take you again"  
"Yes"   
"But first I'm going to take you here"  
"Yes"   
Jimmy loves the confidence, loves how Jean, who can say so little, can be so certain.   
Jean eases Jimmy against the wall. Jimmy lets his hands drop and spreads his fingers against the damp moss, and the rough brick.  
Jean unbuttons him and Jimmy sighs softly as the cold air hits.   
"All for me" Jean says.  
Jimmy spreads his legs just a little and leans back against the wall. Jean is so unhurried it is erotic, his total confidence like another layer of touch.  
Jean strokes Jimmy's cock in an easy rhythm that winds back on itself and rolls. Jean uses his thumb across the head of Jimmy’s cock unexpectedly in a way that sets an expectation that Jimmy's body feels the anticipation for, but which he can't work out consciously. Then Jean leans in to kiss him again with another tempo that weaves in and out of the first.   
And soon Jimmy can't help but move his hips, holding back his moans in case they are discovered, the silent music between them building, and building, and building.  
Jean bends to Jimmy's throat and gradually, gradually, bites just enough to push Jimmy over the edge in shuddering waves and Jimmy comes, muffling his cries against Jean's hair.  
Jean-Paul is silent.   
Jimmy doesn't need him to say anything at all.   
They listen to the city together.


	15. inside

Jimmy wakes naked again, but this time not alone. Jean-Paul is sleeping on his side turned away with one hand pushed between his knees and the other under the pillow.  
Jimmy takes in the beauty of the curve of Jean's back, the softness of his shoulder and the defined muscle of his bicep. This past night Jimmy had learned the feel of most every part of Jean's body. The slight flare of his hips, the arch of his collar bone, the heft of his ass.  
Jimmy shivers as he remembers Jean's promise in the garden that when they woke, he would take Jimmy all over again. This is already true.   
They'd started to touch as soon as they made it through the door to Jean-Paul's room, Jimmy urgent by this time with his need to reciprocate Jean's caresses. Jean had been amused, Jimmy thinks, but caught up in the newness of each other they were soon exhausted and fell asleep in a sweaty mess of half removed clothing.   
In the thick darkness, perhaps some hours after midnight, they had woken and moved against each other in sweet surrender. They had stripped each other by touch, then found each other again, naked and silken under the rough cotton sheets and heavy blankets. They fit together with ease. Jean-Paul smoothing Jimmy's edges.  
It had been making love, that's accurate Jimmy thinks. Sex with Aleister was higher purpose and base desire. Sex with Jean is trusting and loving. Making something for Jimmy's heart without breaking it.   
But Jimmy isn't falling for Jean, he thinks, it is more as though he has landed. 

Jimmy turns away and stares at the whitewashed wall. Something tastes bitter in his mouth. Something about the perfection of this moment.  
The thing is, Jimmy reaches for the thought, he likes to fall. 

When Jean-Paul wakes, Jimmy is already gone.


	16. Gone

It is raining the kind of light rain that soaks through everything. Mizzle rain, they still called it in the countryside when he was a child.  
It’s easier to retrace the way back to Jean-Paul’s mother’s place than Jimmy had expected, but he can remember everything from last night with such clarity. When he passes by the park he lets his fingers trace the wet stonework. He remembers his hands pressed against the other side of the wall, his hands against Jean’s skin. Nobody can see he is weeping in the rain. Jimmy feels people passing him, the busy Monday morning bustle, and he feels they could walk right through him. He feels like a ghost. 

He does not know why he left Jean-Paul, he only knows that once the door was closed it was impossible to go back. He only knows that this familliar ache he is feeling seems infinitely easier to deal with than waiting for Jean-Paul to open his eyes. Jimmy could not wait till in the morning light Jean sees he is not who he’d found in the garden. 

Jimmy pauses at the foot of the stairwell, he doesn’t know which flat it is and he’s not sure how many doors he can bear to knock on to find out. He wipes the wetness from his face and pulls his coat closer. At the first door the woman has Jean’s eyes. 

“Mrs Jones?”  
“Beauvoir. Jones is Paul’s stage name” So she knows exactly who he is then, Jimmy thinks.  
“Mrs Beauvoir. I... I’m sorry I wanted to tell you in person I cannot come this evening. I have to go away, at short notice” Jimmy ducks his eyes at the half-lie, he sees Jean’s mother take the lie and pocket it.  
“How polite of you to come. It is no trouble” The slightest trace of French accent. Jean’s eyes, but Jean has never looked at him so coldly. She must have been imposing on the stage, Jimmy admires her performance.  
Jimmy reaches into his pocket and takes out all the money he has. He has prepared to do this, but now it seems like his selfishness is the only thing he has to show her.  
“For Rose... for the baby...”  
“Certainly.” She will not thank him. She knows what he is about to do to her son.  
“May I see her...”  
“Why?” Her eyes flash, just for a second “I know from Jean-Paul she cannot be yours”  
“I... I’m sorry. I should not presume. It is only...” he cannot explain. He cannot say how Rose opened his heart, but that now he cannot keep it open without breaking.  
“Wait here” She turns inside and Jimmy might run again then, but he doesn’t.

Jean-Paul’s mother has the baby in her arms. She is not going to let Jimmy hold her, but she will let him see what he is leaving. Rose is dressed in a little cap and gown. Simple things. Jimmy sees she is dark eyes, dark hair, dark skin. This is why they left her he realises. Even in his own time this was still a reason.  
“Nobody will take her when she goes from Breena, this is how they are. She will come back to us. To Jean-Paul. We do not think the same way as the petit-bourgeoisie” Jean’s mother says and Jimmy hears the other meaning. You could have been family she is saying. You could have been safe. You are a fool.  
“I must go” Jimmy murmurs.  
“You must do as you choose” She says. Then “this door is always open.” She says it for Jean, not for herself. Jimmy knows she, like Jean, sees everything. 

“Please... tell him I’m sorry”  
“No”  
Jimmy looks up as though she has cut him.  
“You will tell him yourself”  
Jimmy turns and leaves them. He hears Jean-Paul’s mother singing to Rose. 

Au clair de la lune,  
Mon ami Pierrot,  
Prête-moi ta plume  
Pour écrire un mot.  
Ma chandelle est morte,  
Je n´ai plus de feu,  
Ouvre-moi ta porte,  
Pour l´amour de Dieu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Au clair de la lune lyrics are traditional. Some people think they have a sexual double meaning
> 
> A translation is 
> 
> In the light of the moon, Pierrot, my friend  
Loan me your pen to write something down  
My candle's dead, I've got no flame to light it  
Open your door, for the love of God!
> 
> Perhaps Mme Beauvoir is mocking Jimmy for being closed and without spirit


	17. Part II : James

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part II

James works at Decca.  
James has a new suit.  
James lives in a cold-water room in a boarding house off the Kilburn High road.  
James takes nice girls to lunch and perhaps to the park on Sundays.  
James has clean hands, a clean mind, clean sheets, and a clean handkerchief.  
James is a technical boy with an electrical guitar.  
James sets up the studio to get the best results from the new type of microphone.  
James plays for the 78s and collects his money every week with a wage slip.  
James is quiet, reliable, invisible.  
James doesn't watch the flame haired young men trying on each other’s lipsticks in the Black Cat cafe while he drinks cup after cup of strong cheap tea.  
James doesn't drink bourbon in the Marquis of Granby and he doesn't stare blankly at the wall while strangers touch him in the darkness.  
James doesn't watch the chink of light from the gap in the curtains where a woman sings au clair de la lune.  
James doesn't go for days without eating until whilst he is shaving he thinks he might whittle himself away until he disappears entirely.  
James doesn't wake up screaming.  
James doesn't remember.  
Jimmy remembers.

_He is very small, and the grass is to his waist and his mother swings him up up up and he is singing_   
_ and then he hears the radio and he is in the front room and the_   
_ music is swinging up up up - Jeff's sister brings him to the door_   
_ and Jeff has made his own guitar with the frets painted on and -_   
_ he was singing in the choir and he_   
_ used to feel empty of everything except the music swinging him up up up - and_   
_ Jeff makes him smile and makes him able to talk to another boy_   
_ and he watches him move while_   
_ he plays_   
_ and he feels like he is empty of everything except he wants Jeff to swing him up up up with the music_   
_ and he watches Jeff's hands and it is like when he was running_   
_ through the grass and he was very small because he feels that kind of joy and he wants_   
_ Jeff to touch him like he is the music Jeff is making_   
_ like his ribs are painted on frets of a handmade guitar_   
_ and his stomach swings_   
_ up up up every time he_   
_ sees him_   
_ and he is listening_   
_ to the radio_   
_ and_   
_ he wants to_   
_ make music that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my Beck/Page in homage to 'Since I've been loving you' by Konoid_pyanogo_inhografa (in Russian only on AO3) https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399167/chapters/48385081 kudos fansib
> 
> Canon for Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page is that Beck's older sister Annetta brought him to Jimmy's house when they were young teenagers as both were guitar players without anyone to play with - both had handmade guitars. They became inseparable... 
> 
> Places in London gay history 1920s and 30s https://www.timeout.com/london/lgbt/gay-london-in-the-20s the black cat was where Quentin Crisp was at this time. When I originally set the scene with Aleister watching Jimmy in the Lyons Coffee House near Piccadilly I didn't know it had a distinct gay history (must have been instinct)


	18. cold sweat

Jimmy wakes in a cold sweat. Reaches out for water. Cannot move. Panics. Then he remembers this happens all the time now. Ever since he left Jean-Paul his anxiety traps him wandering between worlds.

Not awake, he isn't really asleep. Trapped halfway between sleep and daylight Jimmy waits for the hag to ride him, waits inside the shell of himself as the first wave of adrenaline jolts his half-conscious mind.

Jimmy knows this is painful and impossible, that it must be endured, that the best thing is to try and sink back into slumber, but the animal part of himself is already trying to gnaw off a limb to escape. Jimmy thrashes against the confines of his body, locked in and stuttering. He wakes in cold sweat. Reaches out. Cannot move.

Dreams of his past in the future.

_The doctor said it is glandular fever, but Jimmy knows it is his body choking on lies. They romantically call it the kissing disease. _

_But Judas kissed Jesus. _

_Jimmy knows his throat is closing over because he cannot tell Jeff that he wants him, but that he wants success more. Jimmy cannot breathe because now his feelings are reciprocated, he's drowning. _

_Jeff came to see Jimmy play and Jimmy realized that he had finally become beautiful. Jeff can see the godhead on him, and Jimmy can see it reflected in Jeff's eyes. Jimmy recognizes the hunger because Jeff has looked at him like this in his dreams._

_Being on stage is an act of summoning but Jimmy has nobody to teach him. He's a sorcerer’s apprentice with no master to disobey._

_Do what you will shall be the whole of the law - he doesn't know how to live like that._

_All he knows is that when he plays, he feels the ecstasy in Crowley's poems. _

_The music rides him, bends him, takes him by the hair and shakes him. _

_Two shows a night, six nights most weeks, Jimmy lives in the dark, lives off cigarettes, applause, and alcohol._

_He is seventeen. _

_After the show he makes certain that Jeff will see him with the girl. It doesn't matter who she is, only that she is pliant and beautiful._

_Together, neither of them can make it. Apart, they both have a chance. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy is experiencing sleep paralysis. I have this myself sometimes and it's the experience that led to the idea of being hag ridden, as though you wake with a witch riding you. 
> 
> I find it so hard to write about what Jimmy is like during his flight from Alister and Jean-Paul - I'm stumbling in the dark tripping over his memories. Let me know if you can see where he is going. 
> 
> Jimmy's memories are diverging from the canon timeline because I made him a year older in the AU and the line with Jeff Beck doesn't quite line up either - but he did have glandular fever and have to stop touring and went back to art school for a time before he got seriously into being a session musician at Decca. 
> 
> Decca started as a music recording enterprise in London in 1932 which is why in the previous chapter Jimmy will work for Decca in both times. 
> 
> Stay tuned - I miss you all <3


	19. Stormy Weather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't know why  
There's no sun up in the sky  
Stormy weather  
Since my man and I ain't together  
Keeps raining all the time

Jimmy is working. Musicians come to Decca because it is cutting edge. They come to be made immortal, their presence inscribed into shellac. Most of the recording is done in single takes with one or two microphones and Jimmy likes the magic and the ritual. Jimmy thinks his work is highly valued for his reliability and his ability to blend into any group of musicians, improving everything they do without them really noticing. The adaption to more basic technology is now something Jimmy finds immensely satisfying. He can go hours without being aware of anything but the music and the solving of problems related to sound. The work feels elemental and pure. Decca is his refuge. 

To outsiders, Jimmy at Decca is anyone, he is nobody. A ghost in the machine. Musicians and singers spill into the studio to sign their lives away for a chance to leave poverty or boredom behind. The Black musicians from America come with greater understanding but fewer options, balancing their tenuous contracts in Europe with worse prospects at home.

Jimmy learns a great deal from them, but he doesn’t open up to anyone as an individual. He thinks sometimes they mistake his isolation for disrespect, and he regrets this, but will not do anything that risks making him vulnerable. Jimmy feels this is the price that he must pay for the partial truce his night-time terrors make with the coming of the day. When his heart is shut, so is the door to the attic in his mind. An attic which contains all the things he was glad he had forgotten.

Now his memories are clearer it’s painful to feel affection for anyone. War will come soon and so many of these men will die he thinks. What he feels instead is a sort of endless nagging pity. In this way Jimmy learns the blues. 

* * *

Jean-Paul is there.

Jimmy feels a pain so intense he drops the microphone he is carrying. In his anxiety over such an expensive piece of equipment Jimmy doubles over. He fusses with the mic, checking the connections and looking for signs of damage. When he raises his eyes Jean has looked away, refusing to acknowledge him, and Jimmy flushes with guilt cut through with longing.

Jimmy retreats to the sound desk. The senior techs tend to leave most things to Jimmy now, if he is not required to play. The logs show that the band Jean is with have only booked two hours of studio time. The clock has started.

Jimmy explains the set up to the five musicians, keeping his eyes slightly unfocused so that he doesn’t acknowledge that Jean-Paul is less than three yards away from him. This too shall pass Jimmy thinks to himself, treating the whole encounter like his sleep paralysis and nightmares, something unendurable that must nonetheless be endured. All the time he can feel Jean’s body across the studio, hear Jean’s low voice. Jimmy experiences this like new wounds he cannot tend or acknowledge. 

After ten minutes getting everyone positioned Jimmy has managed to avoid speaking directly to Jean, now Jimmy realizes he doesn’t know who will be singing. He asks in the vaguest of terms and is floored when Jean-Paul answers that it is he. Jean will be singing. 

Jimmy now has no choice but to look at Jean and to assist him. He wants so badly to touch him that is scares him. He can’t touch him, He won’t.

“So, these microphones they pick up everything, you have to position yourself.”

“I understand, not like in the cafe, not like with a crowd.”

“I don’t know your voice...”

“No, I never sang for you...”

Jean’s voice is soft, but Jimmy feels the accusation anyway.

“We… Uh.” Jimmy’s tongue feels thick. He feels stupid and artless “I will hear you in the earphones from this microph...”

“Ok, ok, so you will be in a position to help me? Perhaps. Perhaps not”

The others are looking on, a little bored, a little amused, maybe Jean has some sort of rivalry with the chap from the studio. Typical circuit trouble. Everyone knows everyone eventually.

They start. The band are professional, tight. Jean’s voice is clear and low. He has adopted the new crooner style. It’s like he is murmuring over Jimmy’s shoulder as his voice comes over the cans. They are playing a slow sweet love song, original but nothing special. Jean-Paul makes it intimate like he is singing to the only person in the world he’s ever really noticed. His sweetheart. The girl next door. Jimmy feels the memory of Jean’s hands on him in the darkness, his promises and his faithfulness.

Jimmy hears the echo of all the times Jean listened to him at the café without advising or pressing him. Just that soft sweet attention for the months it took Jimmy to be able to make a new life for himself. And Jimmy just left him, with thirty pieces of silver for baby Rose. 

Jimmy watches Jean-Paul with his friends. The band don’t seem like the continually rotating crew they had worked with together, they seem like more of a unit. Jimmy has heard enough acts now to know they will probably do quite well, for a short time. But also, that Jean-Paul doesn’t have a strong enough voice to make him a star, that his talents lie elsewhere.

Jimmy wonders what it would be like to sing like Ma Rainey, or Memphis Minnie. At Decca he’s been able to get recordings from America of some of the singers he remembers listening to with Jeff in between Elvis and Lonnie Donegan. It felt disorienting to comprehend he is hearing this music when it is new, but the pull of the recordings is so strong Jimmy is willing to risk the nightmares that will come as his mind grinds against itself, struggling to believe impossible things.

Jimmy can’t sing well. Glandular fever scarred his throat too badly, and here in this time it appears the damage remains. He thinks he might make a guitar sing though, if he was back in his own time. Jimmy’s thoughts wander to the golden-haired man in his vision. Jimmy remembers the man laughing like he was filled with the sun, and Jimmy is filled in turn with a yearning to hear him sing. He digs his nails into his palms, using the pain to bring himself back to the here and now, banishing any thoughts of Aleister or magick.

Time is nearly up. Now Jean-Paul and the band change into Stormy Weather. Jimmy thinks this is a poor choice because this song has been a hit all year, and for three different people. The chances are small that an outfit like this will get the right promotion. The band plays through the melody a couple of times getting a feel of the room’s acoustics. Now the atmosphere shifts, something is off with the band. Jean is singing the Ethel Waters version. Jimmy looks up into Jean-Paul’s steady eyes, Jean is turning the key in his lock. Jean sings now for Jimmy.

_When he went away_  
_ The blues walked in and met me_  
_ If he stays away, old rocking chair will get me_  
_ All I do is pray_  
_ The lord above will let me_  
_ Walk in the sun once more_  
  
_ Can't go on_  
_ Everything I had is gone_  
_ Stormy weather…_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to hear Ethel Waters singing Stormy Weather try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SursCSfvIZ8
> 
> 'Stormy Weather, Keeps Raining All The Time' 1933 written by Arlen and Koheler; performed by Ethel Waters and released by Brusnswick Record Corporation.


	20. Horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angel looks down at him and says, "Oh, pretty boy,  
Can't you show me nothing but surrender?" 
> 
> Patti Smith

Jean-Paul shrugs.

“Ok chaps, you get the idea, that sort of mood”

And the moment is folded away and Jean switches back to the Guy Lombardo lyrics and the band joke among themselves about what a canary he is. Jimmy can’t stop glancing at the lacquer disk where he has captured Jean’s voice like a rare butterfly pinned out for display. Jimmy presses his sweating hands against his shirt and then takes the disk off the spool by it’s edges. Sets the replacement, and finishes recording the set in a daze.

Jean is leaving. Jimmy waits for him to make some gesture or indicate some delay, but no, he just files out with the band leaving Jimmy staring at the place Jean was standing and the dust motes in the air. Another band files in. The clock has already reset.

* * *

Jimmy leaves at nine. He pulls his overcoat collar up thinking he will probably end up at the Black Cat trying not to stare too hard at men who remind him of Aleister. Black coffee and self loathing, then just enough sleep to function, just enough dry toast so he doesn’t throw it all back up again. In his attache case the recording of Jean-Paul.

Jean is there. Foot up against the wall. Like James Dean will stand one day. On a million posters.

Jimmy has nothing to show Jean.

He comes parallel and turns to face him across the alley. They must stop meeting like this Jimmy thinks wryly.

“You went back to him” Jean-Paul says.

Jimmy knows what it means but not how to say it isn’t true.

“No.”

“Then why?”

Jimmy can’t say ‘you looked too beautiful sleeping’

“I’m not who you think I am Jean” Jimmy says

“You’re a liar”

Jimmy crumples. He wants a cigarette. He wants a cigarette so he can burn himself.

“You lie to yourself mostly. Telling yourself you can never come home. It’s not like that any longer Jim.”

Jimmy sets his jaw. He can’t let Jean-Paul see him weep because then he will have to beg Jean to let him go.

“Come home”

The light from the streetlight starts to refract and his eyes are full of stars. Jean-Paul is holding him. Jimmy didn’t even notice Jean cross the space between them. Time is sliding sideways. He is falling. His eyes are full of poppies. Drowning in the Hellespont. Aleister warned him not to go too deep. But Jean-Paul is here warm against him. Jimmy wants to drown in Jean’s eyes. He wants to breathe in the water and just surrender. He wants. He’s not sure that he isn’t screaming. His skin is covered in static. He can’t breathe. His legs have gone from under him. Breathe. He is sure he is screaming now, but there isn’t any sound. Can’t breathe. _Cacophony. Gunfire from a war movie, The Longest Day; Songs of Praise choir on the television; A diesel locomotive; Jeff playing electric guitar, electric guitar, electric guitar…_

“Jim. Jim. Easy… Slowly.”

“Easy. Better…”

“Oh Jim. Easy now”

Jean-Paul is tending him. He is kneeling in the wet. The streetlight pools against the shadows. Jean is rubbing his chest slowly... slowly... slowly. His hand is scraping down the wall. He is gasping. Where is his attache case? Jean. Singing to him. His knees are wet. He is ashamed. Jean is there. It’s quiet again.

“Jean...” Jimmy croaks

“You blacked out. Well half way. Easy now.”

“Jean I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m… I’m so sorry, truly”

“I know you are. You just… have to stop running. Jim?”

“I shouldn’t... be here.”

Jean looks at Jimmy levelly. Catches that there is some deeper meaning but isn’t sure what it might be.

“Jean? Please. Come back with me. Kilburn. My room”

“If I come neither of us is leaving”

“Ok. Ok Jean”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no land but the land (Up there is just a sea of possibilities)  
There is no sea but the sea (Up there is a wall of possibilities)  
There is no keeper of the key 
> 
> Land: Horses / Land of a Thousand Dances / La Mer (de) - Patti Smith [1975]


	21. Shake

They sit side by side on Jimmy's narrow bed. His room is cold, and Jimmy's hand is also cold in Jean-Paul's, his fingers still. There is little in the way of comfort or decoration. The bed is made neatly, in an almost military fashion. A small desk and hard chair. The desk is covered in sheet music. Jimmy's old guitar. A newer mandolin. There is a plain pottery bowl on a shelf. A single apple. Jimmy is hunched in his overcoat. He clutches his attaché case. His knees are still wet.

"I thought you had gone to him" Jean-Paul begins

"I left you both. It was... mistaken"

Jean nods but looks confused.

"I thought he was..." Jean looks away "keeping you. I thought you were ashamed."

"I was. I am. Ashamed"

Jimmy takes away his hand and Jean regrets making him do so. Jean lights a cigarette to fill the silence. Holds the metal lighter in his fingertips.

"Jean. Sometimes I think I'm losing my mind. But I think something real has happened, a different thing."

Jimmy shrugs off his coat, gets up and goes to kneel before the small fireplace. His hands are shaking as he lays the kindling, the small pieces of coal.

"Jean, I think... this is impossible to say. I think I remember... a place I can't have been. An impossible place. Impossible things. Aleister he... he helped me. He did something so I started to remember." Jimmy holds out his hand to Jean-Paul for the lighter, but instead Jean-Paul comes and kneels opposite him on the hearth rug. His grey eyes large and wary with concern. Jean lights the fire and they watch the flames catch.

"Maybe Crowley made you see those things. Maybe he played with your mind?"

"He did make me see things... visions, imaginings. But this is different. These are things I had made myself forget."

"I need to ask you something. Before we talk about these things, I need to know"

Jimmy bites back his words. Tries to make space for Jean-Paul. The flames are in Jean's eyes now.

Jean ducks his head and asks softly "Why did you leave me?"

Jimmy feels an arrow pierce his chest. Jean-Paul's bravery takes his breath away.

He cannot say _“Because love feels like I'm dying”_ so he says nothing. Only gasps as the pain goes through him. Jean-Paul keeps his head down and Jimmy feels a wave of tenderness start to warm him. For the first time in months he wants to be warmed. At last Jean-Paul looks up and then Jimmy can't look away even though he can see in Jean-Paul's eyes what he has done. The damage. 

"I can't... I can't explain Jean."

"So, stop talking. Show me."

Jimmy feels like he can hear both their heartbeats in the quiet room. He can't show Jean why he left. But he can show him why he won't run again.

Jimmy reaches over and pulls Jean-Paul to him, so they are both up on their knees as though they are praying. Jimmy feels feverish and his guilt is bitter in his mouth. Jimmy makes himself stay present. Makes himself feel the bare carpet under his knees. Feels how he is hot from the fire down his right side and freezing cold to his left. 

He holds Jean-Paul's shoulders, the bones soft in the cups of his palms. Jean is impassive but poised. Jimmy can feel how Jean is weary of trying to guard Jimmy when Jimmy has been so reckless with his love. Jimmy doesn't know how to make this better. So he sings.

_Measuring an autumn day_

_You'll only find it slips away to grey_

_The hours will bring you pain_

_The hours will bring you pain_

Jimmy's voice is raw and cracking but he's carrying on

_We're falling you and me_

_The time it takes to see_

_Till the rising of the sun_

_The time it takes to run_

Jimmy feels his chest is cracking open. He feels so exposed, so open. To not turn away is so painful. 

"I need you Jean" he says at last "I always needed you"

And finally Jimmy has the right key and Jean-Paul’s lock opens too and they are in each other's arms, as each pulls the other to himself.

Jimmy can't tell if he is holding Jean up or it's the other way around but it feels like forgiveness. Jimmy feels like he is melting into Jean-Paul, he feels so hot and so cold. And they are kissing in wordless, gasping kisses, and Jimmy's head is spinning now.

Then Jean is holding him back and has a hand to his forehead. Such a cool hand. Jean is saying something. Saying he is too hot, that he is burning. And Jimmy wants to say that Jean is wrong and that he doesn't feel ashamed any longer, but the words won't come out.

And Jimmy is laughing and trying to kiss Jean-Paul again, but he seems so far away. The room is spinning, and Jean-Paul is leading him to the bed. It doesn't feel seductive, but Jimmy feels loved and he considers that Jean makes him weak at the knees, but now he can't actually stand up.

Jean lifts him. Jimmy feels like a puppet. He feels like a real boy. He feels like his bones are grating together. Jean folds him into the bed and Jimmy is saying "need you need you need you Jean" and his mouth is so very dry but sweat is running down his back even though the room is still cold.

Jean takes off his shirt for him and Jimmy hears him gasp. Jimmy thinks Jean-Paul is saying something about how thin he is, and he wants to explain that he tried to just stop living but it didn't work. And how he's glad, because Jean found him again, but he's not making any sense and Jean is wrapping him in blankets while he shakes and shakes and shakes.

Jimmy feels himself passing out, and he wonders as the world goes black and folds up on itself, if this is what will happen every time he falls in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Jimmy sings is a slightly altered fic version of 'Knowing that I'm losing you' by the Yardbirds which is very similar to Zeppelin's 'Tangerine'. JP wrote both when he with the Yardbirds with some credit going to Keith Relf for the unreleased Yardie's track. It was much later released on a compilation without the lyrics afaik.


	22. Helterskelter

He runs up the stairs and stands without knocking in front of Aleister’s door. His breath is labored and he’s not sure if it the exertion or the anxiety. He twists his hands in his pockets unwilling to attempt summoning Aleister after all.   
The door half-opens and Aleister peers out, looking at him without surprise.  
“So you found him then?” Aleister says mildly.   
Jean-Paul swallows.   
“Yes?” he offers.  
“Well, presumably, that’s working out swimmingly” Aleister says opening the door and ushering Jean inside, rolling his eyes.

Aleister leads Jean-Paul to the library and makes a courtly little bow to let him enter first. On a table in front of the overstuffed love seat Jean-Paul sees that afternoon tea for two is laid out. Fragrant steam is misting from the spout of a delicate porcelain teapot painted with pink roses.   
“Jasmine” Aleister comments, and he steers Jean-Paul to sit down with a hand lightly at the small of his back. Jean-Paul recoils slightly but if Aleister notices he does not pay any heed. Aleister sits opposite him and Jean feels like they are sitting down like old men in the park about to play a game of chess.  
Jean-Paul notices the crumpets are still warm enough to be melting the butter spooned onto their golden tops. Jean was brought up around stage magicians, but he’s still impressed. Despite himself.   
“So,” Aleister says “You come to me and not a physician?” He pours Jean a cup of jasmine tea. The cup rings against the saucer.   
“I don’t trust you. But he does.”   
“Oh my dear boy. But you do.”  
“I think you are a charlatan, but you are important to him.”  
“Look dearheart, you would have never had your moment in Eden with him if I hadn’t tempted him first. And I sent him to you with my seed still hot in his mouth. So if you want your darling fixed you might be smart to be less tiresomely honest.” 

If Aleister is angry then his voice doesn’t betray him, Jean-Paul thinks, but his attempts to needle Jean only make Jean calmer. Aleister obviously cares more than he says. If this is what it takes, so must it be.   
“Crowley, I wouldn’t be here unless I thought you could help. Today that’s all that matters to me.”  
“He is ill again?”  
“Gravely, perhaps.”  
“He risks too much without protection. He can hide from us but not from the gods.”  
Aleister catches Jean-Paul’s skeptical eye.  
“Ah, so you believe your mother when she says religion is the opium of the masses? I’ve been addicted to both and I can assure you they are quite distinct.”   
“I don’t know what he believes. He is not someone who tries to persuade others Crowley. If we have souls, then his is wandering.” Jean-Paul has not eaten or drunk anything, but he puts his hands to his teacup as though to warm them. “I think you can call him back.”

“And what will you bargain for his soul?”   
“I will give all I have to give” Jean says, and he opens his hands palm up.   
“When the time comes Jean-Paul, you will have to let him go. Let him go back.” Aleister says, and Jean knows that now it isn’t a game. He wants to go to Jimmy and make Ruth’s promise to Naomi. How can he think about letting Jimmy be all alone again?   
“Wherever he goes, I will also go.” Jean says.  
“None of us knows if we can travel as far as where James is from” Aleister says “That’s not a promise you can make. That’s for the Norns to decide.”  
“Crowley, there is nowhere I wouldn’t go to be with him”  
“You won’t have that choice Jean”  
“Why” Jean-Paul flashes, frustrated at Aleister’s riddles. “Where is he from?”  
“1963” Aleister says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .  
Ruth 1:16
> 
> And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:


	23. Ovum

He doesn’t know why he is in prison, but he is sure he has done something wrong. Terribly wrong. They must have beaten him because every part of him aches. Maybe he deserved it. Probably. He is so thirsty, and it is so dark. He’s lost all sense of time. How careless of him. The walls are so cold. But he’s hot from fever. He curls in on himself. The cold isn’t soothing. They have left him naked. The walls are smooth like glass and curved. The cell is cramped, perhaps only twice his arm span at the widest. Even the floor dips like a bowl making it impossible to lie down properly. He has tried to feel all around, and he cannot feel the edges of a door. Maybe it is above him where he cannot reach. But it feels like the walls narrow above. Like a dome? The cell feels only a little higher than he can stretch above his head. Because the floor is slippy he is frightened to fall. He hurts so badly already. The worst thing, the worst, is what the cell does to sound. There is no sound. When he strikes the wall there is nothing at all. When he cries out it is like the sound soaks into the walls like ink into blotting paper. He thought he had been deafened and the terror had been indescribable, but then he covered his ears and could hear his own blood rushing through his veins. So thirsty.

* * *

"All this austerity is entirely unnecessary" Aleister says looking round Jimmy's room

"I wouldn't torture him, so he appears to have taken it upon himself to achieve suffering through the decor."

Jean-Paul bites his teeth together. It was a bad idea bringing Aleister here, but what choice did he have. Jimmy looks so lost in the bed, narrow though it is. Aleister kneels beside it and gently pulls back the sheet.

In only two days Jean-Paul realizes he has forgotten to be shocked. In his well-tailored work suit it just wasn't apparent how much weight Jimmy had lost. But to see him undressed it is undeniable. A thin sheen of sweat covers Jimmy’s skin making it look almost translucent. His hair, Jean-Paul had brushed it for him, unwilling for Aleister to see him with it ratted. Jimmy had stopped responding to being touched. That was what had frightened Jean the most. Jean-Paul watches Aleister falter and the ever present tremble in his hands cease momentarily with his shock.

"Nothing of him that doth fade. But suffer a sea change. My Vivian." Aleister turns to Jean-Paul "He goes too far under. Five fathoms deep, the idiot child. And you no better with your ridiculous romance. If you'd just made him your bitch he'd have stayed close." 

Jean-Paul reminds himself that punching an aging drug addict will not, in the end, make him feel any better. He should have just taken Jim to his mother and Breena. Maybe he will. Maybe this is just a physical illness after all.

But again Aleister, for all his ironical bluster, appears genuinely moved, and touches Jimmy almost reverently.

"How long has he had this fever?"

"Almost two days, coming close to that."

"And what was he doing?" Aleister turns again "were you both doing, rather?"

"I don't see how that concerns..."

"Of course, you don't see Jean. That's the bloody point."

"Arguing. Ok. We had been. Then we weren't. We. He... He just fell apart. Burning up"

"Because you touched..."

"I don't see" Jean-Paul gathers himself "Of all people Crowley, how can you..."

"Stop. Jean-Paul just stop. You have no idea what you are dealing with. I am trying to assess his emotional state. Imagine, let's say, oil and water and you shake them together, blend them. Then you were distracted and left the jar unshaken. They would separate again, the oil splits from the water. But what if your life depended on keeping them blended? It's a poor analogy, forgive me. But our beloved James, time is trying to separate him back out, as it were. He's been using large reserves of energy to keep himself anchored here, but he's not trained, he doesn't really know that he is doing it. His… passions. They impair his capacity to…"

"What do you mean time? You seriously expect me to..."

"I expect very little of you, except you accept the help you asked for" Aleister glares "I have little patience and less every hour Jean-Paul, so it's up to you, unless you want to argue over his corpse?"

Jean ducks his head. He wills himself not to lash out. To control this base desire to just push Crowley out the door and down the stairs. But he's just like the rich bastards who try and take you out the back after shows. The ones who get a kick out of rough trade. It’s just a matter of distance and boundaries. Of self-control.

"Right Crowley, what do you propose."

"To my temple."

"Your..?"

"My abode.” Aleister replies, deadpan. “Go and find a cab"

"I don't think he's well enough to travel. Can't you..."

"Yes. But not as easily. Must you be so obdurate? bring that, a mandolin is it?"

Jean-Paul nods assent, and then reluctantly goes searching for a cab feeling absurd to be clutching the mandolin as if he were off to work instead of on this unlikely mission.

The cabbie agrees to wait at the curb while Jean-Paul goes back upstairs for Jimmy but Aleister appears carrying him in both his arms as though he is a fallen knight from some Arthurian battlefield. Jean bridles at the dramatic touch, loath to draw attention to themselves, but strangely people in the street don't even seem to see that Aleister is there carrying an insensate, half naked young man, wrapped in a blanket. This is why boys meet a sticky end, Jean thinks, nobody gives a fuck about you once people like Crowley get involved.

"Did you lock the door?"

"It hardly appeared necessary" Aleister sighs, while Jean bundles them into the back of the cab. So, then Jean-Paul must run upstairs again. Jim's guitar is in there, and his better suit.

Jean starts to gather a few of Jimmy’s clothes into a bundle when he sees Jimmy’s attaché case. He'd been so worried not to misplace it. Jean throws the garments onto the bed and takes the case instead. There isn't room for the guitar too. There isn't time. 

* * *

He thinks he hears voices. The hope that flares inside him is frightening. Surely it would be them. Surely voices in a prison are trouble. But he feels so lonely, so starved for sound. This isn’t being alone this is being isolated. There is no control. None. He blushes with shame to feel such desire for the presence of other people, even if they mean him harm. He would be sorry if he could remember what he has done. He wishes his accusers would come an accuse him instead of leaving him here like this. He can hear voices. Very indistinctly. They are arguing. Then nothing. Nothing is worse.

* * *

Aleister carries Jimmy up to his apartment. Jean-Paul follows at his heels like a Saluki, quietly watching for an opportunity to bring his quarry down. He need not waste his vigilance like this. Aleister thinks, he will not harm Jimmy unless it cannot be avoided.

Aleister takes Jimmy into the third door on the left. Aleister’s own chamber. He lays him softly into his own bed, a place he had never intended to bring him. The room is large, and the four posted bed is extravagant, covered in silks and furs. The bed is positioned out from the wall by several feet, so it is possible to approach it from all sides. There are two large mirrors on wheeled stands, one at each side of the bed. A large canvas in oils on the wall depicts the falling Lucifer, and an ornate carved wooden chair is situated, throne like, in the bay window with their wine-coloured velvet drapes. Of course, Aleister is aware the room approaches parody, but his lovers are usually in on the joke. He is not used to treating it as a sick room. Well not for anyone but himself.

The wards he routinely sets should protect Jimmy, prevent him from slipping away further, but Aleister does not think they will be enough to call him back to consciousness. He will not admit it to Jean-Paul but he has far more expereince with helping people travel to the realms than he does in going to seek those that are lost there. Jimmy, Aleister stops a moment remembering how Jimmy had coaxed him to call his name, yes Jimmy has powerful innate talents. He may have hidden himself very deeply and very well.

“Jean-Paul. Will you do as I ask to help him?”

“I said I would do anything”

“Then strip naked”

Jean-Paul heats with anger at this insane fucking grifter. But he realises he is trapped by his own vow. He tries to make his hands move but they freeze at the buttons of his shirt.

“He needs your body, needs touch, I cannot…”

Aleister’s face twists in the admission. Jean-Paul notices that the tremor in Aleister’s hands is worse, that he looks almost a sweaty as Jimmy. Aleister sees Jean-Paul see his weakness and he draws him self up. He is a tall man. Tall like Jimmy, but heavier and a little gone to fat. For the first time Jean-Paul thinks he can see something in him other than trickery. Jean’s hands are unbound. He removes all his clothing looking Aleister in the eyes. Unashamed.

“I know you would not choose it. But will you do my bidding, will you assent to my touch?

Jean looks at Aleister levelly

“One good reason. Look me in the eyes and give me just one.”

Aleister’s shoulders fall, his hands twist on each other. “I’m impotent Jean. Most days. It’s the magick I know, but… I can’t fail him…”

“Then yes. But if I find you are lying, I will hunt you down. Do you understand?”

Jean-Paul spits in his hand and holds it out. Aleister does the same to seal the deal. They shake. As their hands clasp Jean-Paul gasps. Aleister’s touch is like unburning fire. He feels a hitch in his groin. Unbidden.

“The mirrors. We make a tunnel of reflections”

Aleister wheels the mirrors round so they are at opposite sides of the bed, reflecting each other to infinity. Jean can see a thousand Jimmy’s.

“Go to him” Aleister says softly “But don’t look at the reflections. Not yet”

Jean-Paul climbs up into the bed on Jimmy’s right. He looks almost lifeless, but Jean can see the pulse at his throat. He takes Jimmy’s hand. Even with the fever heat coming off him his hands are cold. Aleister is murmuring to himself, he draws the drapes quickly, lights several small glass globes on sconces situated around the room. Then he draws a circle in chalk round the bed with himself, Jean-Paul, and Jimmy on the inside. As Aleister closes the circle Jean feels Jimmy, for the first time in two days, tighten his grasp against Jean’s hand. 

* * *


	24. Meltwater

He feels the wall under his palm soften almost imperceptibly at first and then a warmth. The first warmth he can remember feeling. He is frightened to take his hand away in case the feeling stops. He tentatively explores other areas of the cell that he can reach while staying in this position but no, it is only this place beneath his right palm. He curves himself around the place. The only soft thing he can imagine.

* * *

Aleister removes his clothes and gets onto the bed at Jimmy's left. To Jean-Paul he looks vulnerable, and Jean relaxes his guard just a little more.

"What does he mean to you Jean?"

"Everything"

"Does he know"

"He doesn't believe, I think"

"What do you believe?"

"That he loves me, but not himself" Jean blushes. How can he speak with Crowley like this? But here in this place it seems so possible.

"Lie beside him. Give him your touch"

Jean remembers the day he found Rose. How he put the baby to Jimmy's skin and unwittingly unlocked his trust. Jean-Paul gently lies against Jimmy and fits himself against him. He is scared to break him, to put any weight on Jimmy's limbs.

Aleister comes to lie against Jimmy's other side but he keeps himself propped up on his elbow so he can see Jean-Paul.

"Look into the mirrors" Aleister says. Jean finds Aleister's voice is changing, becoming melodic. Charming him.

He looks and sees the three of them reflected. The shadows and angles of their bodies. Sees them repeated down the tunnel of mirror images. Multiplied.

"When did you know you wanted him"

"It was... many months ago. He brought me a silk cravat. He could barely afford food. I think he stole it."

"Tell me what you never told him..." Aleister's voice is lower. Silken.

Jean-Paul is momentarily lost in the sense memory. It is easier and easier to tell Aleister his secrets.

"I couldn't ask him for anything. He was so brittle. So on edge. But when he played that fell away. I couldn't stop looking at him. Thinking about him. How he moved when he played. How he held his hands when we talked. He was oblivious. Wrapped up in... surviving I think."

"Tell me about the cravat"

"I... kept it under my pillow. I... one day I" Jean-Paul takes a deep breath "One day I wanted him so much I touched myself with it wrapped round my hand"

"Jean, put your hand over his heart."

Jean-Paul puts his hand on Jimmy's chest and feels the life under his touch. He feels the echoes of desire from that day. That yearning. Unable to get through to Jimmy.

"Tell me again. Tell James"

"Can he hear me?"

"I can hear you. James, we have to hope."

"Jim. I wanted to ask you home, but I didn't dare. You seemed so lost, but so driven. I couldn't take my eyes off you all night, but you didn't notice. I got hard just listening to you. I thought about you all the way home. It was so late it was early. You remember? And the dawn made me feel hopeful.”

Jean-Paul smiles at the memory

“I took the cravat and it almost smelled of you. From being in your pocket. I put it to my lips and it was like you were kissing me. And I was hard again, and I lay on my stomach on the bed.”

Jean-Paul stops, feeling Jimmy breathing beneath his hand, Aleister’s eyes on him. The room heavy with confession. The drag in his belly and all the places where his skin is touching Jimmy’s are hot with wanting.

“I was grinding into the sheets. Jim, it felt like you were there. I imagined you… fucking me. Bending over me. Oh god Jim I wanted you so much and I'd never even touched you then. It was so real. I wrapped the silk round my hand and fucked my own fist.”

“And then I was fucking you. I was inside you. And you wanted me. You were calling me. And the silk was so soft. But that wasn't what was so hot, it was because you stole it for me. And it was like I was fucking you while you were fucking me. Oh Jim. Baby. I didn't want to come because it would be over.”

“But I couldn't stop. And I was calling out. I was calling your name. Falling apart. And I came in my fist. So hard. So hard Jim. And I was crying because I loved you. Baby I need you home. Come home. Please come home. I will do anything. I can't lose you again..."

"Touch yourself Jean. Call him home"

Jean is lost in the need and the wanting. He can feel Aleister’s watching all across his exposed skin. He sees himself in the mirrors, sees the three of them entwined. They are glowing. He can see the need on his own face reflected again and again and again. He is hard against Jimmy's thigh.

Aleister reaches across Jimmy and puts his hand on Jean's chest. Jean feels flooded with liquid fire. He moans and pulls his hand down to his own cock.

* * *

He feels the warmth start to spread out from the place under his hand. And then the cell starts to fill with a warm fluid. And he is surprised that the fear has slipped away. It's like the walls of the cell are weeping ichor. And then he knows they will come. His two stars. They will find him. He is weeping too, with relief. And the fluid is rising rapidly but it feels so safe and comforting. As it rises up, over his face, he just keeps breathing and feels the fluid fill his lungs with light. And he can hear his own heartbeat, then another, then another. Three heartbeats. And he floats. They will come.

* * *

Aleister locks eyes with Jean-Paul.

"Use it Jean. Use the wanting to call him."

Jean gathers himself "How? Help me."

"Keep telling him but pull the energy together. Like making music, yes? You need a rhythm, not chaos. Use the rhythm of your body"

Jean tries to understand, tries to lower the desperation, tries to hope.

"Jim. Jimmy. In the garden. Do you remember?"

Jean starts to move his hand slowly up and down his cock, keeping it slow, much slower than he wants to.

"Jim. It's just like those streets. You didn't know the way, but I showed you. You knew we were going to be together. Just knew. Coming home is like that."

The fire from Aleister's hand is soaking through Jean like brandy. He leans into the feeling. Wraps a leg over Jimmy's thighs. Ruts gently against his hip. Little soft pushes

"You were so right for me. You trusted me. Jim. Come home." Jean pauses, moistens his lips with his tongue "Aleister is here too. We both want you to come home."

Jean can feel the pull in his belly and his balls in waves. He uses Aleister's eyes to steady himself at the shores of his orgasm. Not going any deeper.

"We both want you home baby. You can feel how much. Jim. Nobody ever moved me like you do. Come back and join us eh love? We want you so much"

* * *

He can feel them outside. Both his stars. He can feel the fire inside him now. He must have been mistaken. This isn't a prison. This is just a waiting place. All he needs to do is open. He presses up against the wall and it feels softer now. He finds he can start to work his fingers into the surface. That he can begin to push deeper. He works both hands into the wall, and starts to pull it apart

* * *

"Let go. Now." Aleister says

And it's as easy as that. Jean just lets himself tip over the edge of the wave into the roll of his loving and he's coming and coming and coming and his heart is wide open, and his love is pouring out and the fire from Aleister is flowing through him, and he’s coming onto his own belly in sobbing ragged gasps.

* * *

And he gets both hands through the wall and it splits then like an over ripe mango if you push in your thumbs, and the waters are spilling out and washing him through the gap into a slippy sticky mess and his eyes are gummed together, and he feels warm bodies pressed to either side and he knows his two stars are holding him close and safe and loved and that nothing else matters except beauty and music and the new day.

* * *

"There you are love, oh my love, I missed you, we missed you so much love, do you know where you are?"

Safe he thinks.

"With you Jean" Jimmy says. “with Aleister.”


	25. Newly

Jean-Paul kisses him and it’s like taking his first breath. And he feels Aleister put his arm under his shoulders and the two of them are both so perfectly real, perfectly there, and he feels something new. He feels whole. He runs his hand down Jean’s chest and feels the slick of his cum on his belly and it feels like the elixir of life. Jimmy raises his wet hand to his own chest and puts it to his heart as Jean-Paul kisses him, and he feels Aleister lace his fingers over his own.

After what seems like days their kiss ends and Jimmy leans back against Aleister and takes Jean’s face between his hands. He looks into his eyes.

“Jean I love you. I’ve loved you a long time.”

“I know. But don’t ever stop telling me…”

“Jean, I want your name in my mouth. Jean-Paul I love you. I love you, Jean. I love you.”

“I love you too. Mon feu noir. Mon ange tombant” Then Jean looks away “Aleister” Jean-Paul says “Thank you”

Jean is looking at Aleister over Jimmy’s shoulder, so Jimmy turns in his arms and cups a hand to Aleister’s jaw.

“My old man. I know you say this is star love. I don’t care. Take it”

Aleister turns his face into Jimmy’s palm and Jimmy puts his thumb to Aleister’s mouth.

“It’s yours” Jimmy says “Take it”

But Aleister looks away.

“So, my princes, I must adjourn.” Aleister says

Jimmy sees the shake and the sweat and how it’s starting to hurt Aleister to be touched but it is Jean-Paul that reaches out and stops him.

“No” Jean says, his hand on Aleister’s arm. “No more shame for any of us.”

And then Aleister is sitting broken on the edge of his great fine bed while Jimmy and Jean hold him. He weeps.

“Let’s get what you need, I will help you. But we come back here and finish this thing, eh?” Jean-Paul says gently.

Jean lays Jimmy down again against the pillows and kisses him at his temple. Then he helps Aleister to his feet and over to a small dresser to fetch his lacquer box. Jean-Paul helps Aleister into pyjamas and then helps him perform the un-magical ritual of his addiction with a matter-of-fact grace that almost breaks Jimmy’s heart again. The look of release on Aleister’s face as the heroin hits is so sensual Jimmy understands why Aleister’s heart is bound.

The chalk circle is scuffed open, but the bonds they have made are holding. Jean now helps Aleister back into the bed. Aleister’s pupils are narrowed to tiny vanishing points of consciousness and Jimmy lays himself down into the curve of Aleister’s chest, now more guardian than ward. Jean sits cross legged next to them till he is sure Aleister is just drifting, dreaming not drowning. Then he lays down on Aleister’s other side and takes Jimmy’s hand. Jimmy traces the callouses of Jean-Pauls fingers, feels how strong his wrists are.

“You always feel like you have music in your hands Jean. Do I feel like that to you?”

“Yeah, you do. But I always felt it the most in the way you move. You’ve got music running all through you. I could hear it when you were waiting tables.”

“You’re gone from the café too though. The band you were with. Are with. They are something different. Tight.”

“Maybe I wanted something to show you. To make you sorry.” Jean laughs.

“Jean I… I went with men I didn’t even know their names.”

Jean-Paul tightens his hand over Jimmy’s.

“I hope they were kind, is all,”

“No. They were never kind. I thought I could only feel numb, but sometimes the fact that they were never you hurt me a great deal. These past days. I dreamt I was in prison and I’d done something terrible I couldn’t remember. Now I remember and I was so wrong. I didn’t do anything unworthy of love Jean. Not here. Before… well in the other place. There was a boy. A guitarist like me. He loved me. Jean, I loved him too. The first boy I ever loved. I made him feel ashamed of loving me. And after that I was ashamed of living. I felt if anyone loved me, they would see what a Judas I was, that mark of Cain on me. You. You and Aleister. What you did for me. I understand now. I understand I was wrong about myself most of all.”

“You came home… that’s all I wanted.”

“But I don’t know if it’s possible to stay Jean”

“I know. I love you. You came Jim. I just want you to try…” Jean-Paul fights not to turn away. He looks into Jimmy’s eyes.

“That’s not true. I can’t bear to lose you again. I can’t. But… what can we do against the universe? Just try and hold on…”

“One for all, all for one?” Jimmy smiles sadly

“An army of lovers cannot lose. That’s what they said about the Spartans you know.”

Jimmy smiles then “I think everything I know might be wrong, except about you, about you both. So I will start there.”

He reaches up and runs his hand into Jean-Paul’s hair.

“Will you play for me Jean? Will you sing me to sleep?”


	26. Part III: Solar/Lunar

He stands before the doorway at the top of the stairs, guitar case in hand.

The door opens and a person a little older than Jimmy looks him over. Of course, it isn't Aleister, but Jimmy still feels his stomach drop.

This guy is maybe mid-thirties, slight, lithe, with what Jimmy has heard people in America call Cafe Con Leche skin. Three-piece suit. Unusual now.

"You're late" The guy says smiling, which is implausible because Jimmy had not decided to come until this morning.

Something in Jimmy breaks. Breaks because this person sounds so much like Jean Paul. It must be memory overlaying perception. An aural effect.

"I just, I'm sorry... I uh, I'm not who you think I am. I used to know. Used to know the people here."

Jimmy puts a hand to his forehead, brushes his hair out of his eyes.

The stranger locks eyes with him, takes hold of him, and Jimmy is too shocked to object. Pulls him into a hug and Jimmy feels their breasts against his chest.

Feels flooded with warmth. Feels the honey of her voice, low, soothing, amused.

"Jimmy. Stop trying to look with just your eyes. It's me. Rose. People call me Sonny. You used to call me Sunshine"

"Rose Sunday" he doesn't say it as a question.

"You were the first to hold me after Jean, your body remembers. Found under a piano. That's a good story for a guy who plays the blues" She laughs.

"How did... Wait. Are you?"

"Yes. I'm all those things. We are expecting you. Relax. You're home."

Sonny leads him to the second door on the left. The sunlight frames a woman sitting on what was once Aleister's throne chair.

She sits in profile the better to set off her crown of braids. The muscles of her arms. Her green and gold kente cloth robes.

"My wife" Sonny introduces "Ms Moon. Scarlett Moon."

"James."

"Ms Moon"

"Etta. Sit. Please." Her accent is American, slightly southern maybe. She turns to Sonny and softens,

"Baby, the box. I left it in the bedroom."

Sonny turns to go, patting Jimmy lightly on the shoulder.

"I'm so happy you came to us first."

"First?" Jimmy asks but Sonny has gone and Ms Moon answers instead.

"Before you choose." 

"Choose?"

"If he will be the one."

Jimmy remembers laughter. The man in the dragon tree opening his eyes. His exposed throat. His hair.

"Tea?" Ms Moon says. There are three cups.

* * *

Sonny is staring at Jimmy intently.

"You don't look any different. It's like you are from my dreams. You used to swing me up to the sky. You used to show me the stars."

"You were a little girl. So little"

"Now I am... Well people see what they want to see. What do you want to see Jimmy?"

"Jean. I see Jean. You sound like him. Move a little like him."

"Do I? I was too young really. I have his records. But not speaking"

Sonny looks up. Eyes true. Heart open like Jean-Paul. Child of his spirit. In this person. Had Jean's family loved Sonny truly as their own then?

"Did you tell him what might happen? I always wondered."

Jimmy pauses. The pain of it for him isn’t even weather-beaten yet.

"Aleister said it couldn't change anything. His will was his will. Also, I knew so little. Your grandmother?"

"She was proud of him. She never found out what happened after Barcelona."

"I'm not very... I never understood the politics. I miss him."

"James," Ms Moon says softly, "you go tonight?"

"Yes. Long drive. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

"Your tea leaves then. We must use what we have. James you know nothing is decided. You decide.

These illusions, you would have learned them yourself in time from Aleister. If you had been given the time. You were given... not enough."

"More than most."

"Yes."

Ms Moon takes Jimmy's cup and turns it over, so the dregs run out. Holds it up to the light from the window. China so fine it is translucent.

"You tell me what it says James."

"I can't. I don't..."

"You can. Why else are you here?" Her eyes flash.

"I want... I want it to matter. The music. I want light. I want shade. I want people who are not afraid to change."

"What will you give?"

"Everything. But not blindly. Risk when it matters. Not for its own sake."

"What are you seeking?"

"My angel"

"To catch you in the middle of the air? Are you still falling? Aleister had the training and it didn't save him"

"And you?"

"My folk don't have the luxury of falling"

Those eyes again.

"You see why I love her" Sonny cuts in.

Ms Moon smiles like Sonny lights her from the inside.

"Open the box baby. Show him"

A small watercolour. A key. A word on a piece of paper.

Jimmy looks at the watercolour.

"I did this"

It is a picture of a dragon in red and green. The colours flow together.

"After a vision. My first…" Jimmy struggles to pull the different worlds together. Sonny puts a hand on his arm.

"What does it make you think of now Jimmy. Not then. Today?"

"My guitar. An old friend. I loved. He gave me this guitar when he joined the band instead of me. It was a mess. He left. Everyone left. I have to start again"

"Ok so use that Jimmy. Start again. A dragon guitar."

"And this," Ms Moon gestures to the paper "Zoso?"

"It's a form of Capricorn. A sigil"

She can't help but roll her eyes.

"In the simplest ways of course. Yes. But what is it for you?"

"I don't know. Aleister he started to teach me. I don't know"

"So, this you will need to discover"

"I don't recognise the key."

"That's different" Sonny says and gives Ms Moon a look Jimmy can't quite catch

"Etta?"

"Yes baby?"

"Well..."

"That's family. You tell it"

"Jimmy. I don't know what to say. I've known about this since I was maybe eight or nine. But it's like a fairy story.

I remember Aleister like I remember Jean and you. I was three when. You know when. They told aunt Breena. For me. For you. If ever..."

Sonny stops.

"Come"

* * *

They stand in front of the last room on the right. The fifth door.

"Did you?" Sonny asks.

"Once"

Jimmy looks away.

"Aleister left me a trust. Invested in Decca. This place," Sonny says at last.

"Decca." Jimmy laughs

"You don't have to"

"Thank you"

The key in the lock. The night in the garden. Mirrors and smoke. Turning in his heart.

"I want to"

Jimmy opens the lock.

In the room.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

* * *

A car horn. Peter. It's time.

Nothing.

Everything.

They left him everything.

Sonny and Ms Moon. Ms Moon puts her hand on Jimmy's arm. Then holds his face.

"You've lived twice James. You are going to have more lives than most. You will have your heart's desire and you will lose it. Many times.

You will always struggle to feel. If he's the one. Let him feel for you. You will need soul. Go to Atlantic and speak to Ahmet Ertegun. Say Etta Moon sent you.

You will make a bargain James. The crossroads bargain. It's not what you think it is. Go. Find somebody to love."

* * *

"Where to James?"

Peter laughs like being born was a joke. It's comforting.

"Wolverhampton - West Midlands College of Education. Pick up Chris on the way?"

"Follow the star"

"Something like that. Or like Jason"

"The Argo?"

"Maybe"

"I'm not being facking Hercules Jim. I got enough labours as it is. Why Apollonius, not exactly cheery is it?"

"Oh, Terry says he looks like a Greek god"

"Who does"

"The singer"

"Well you look like bloody Orpheus Jim. Can't look back mate."

Jimmy says nothing. Just holds the key in his hand. Remembers flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter. Thank you forever to S. NK. and WK. who made Crowleyverse live. This story is ending but this world remains open, in certain places. 
> 
> I will maybe add more notes later but there are some things you might want to know. 
> 
> Jean-Paul was with the Durutti Column - in the anarchist International Brigades in Spain and Catalonia.  
Aleister dies in December 1947.  
Jimmy goes to see Sonny and Etta on the 20th July 1968.
> 
> Sonny is not trans. S/he is passing. Maybe now we would call her non-binary but that's a little inelegant maybe as that's not what s/he would call herself in 1968. I asked how she wanted this bit written and have written it accordingly.
> 
> Etta is Aleister's Magickal descendant and Sonny is his practical heir. Etta is older than Sonny but too young to have been taught by Aleister directly - which was probably for the best. 
> 
> Much like Zeppelin I have borrowed from African Diaspora culture, the blues, and have given little back. I'm learning. 
> 
> Sabrina. I miss you. We all do. It is to you I give this tune.


	27. Coda

The door.

Aleister looks at Jean-Paul. Sighs. 

"David. Another bloody Jones..." 

"Let him in then. You old wretch."


End file.
